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Zuleika Dobson
One woman's beauty fells the whole of Oxford in this sidesplitting classic campus novel.
Nobody could predict the consequences when ravishing Zuleika Dobson arrives at Oxford, to visit her grandfather, the college warden. Formerly a governess, she has landed on the occupation of prestidigitator, and thanks to her overwhelming beauty—and to a lesser extent her professional talents—she takes the town by storm, gaining admittance to her grandfather's college. It is there, at the institution inspired by Beerbohm's own alma mater, that she falls in love with the Duke of Dorset, who duly adores her in return. Ever aware of appearances, however, Zuleika breaks the Duke's heart when she decides that she must abandon the match.
The epidemic of heartache that proceeds to overcome the academic town makes for some of the best comic writing in the history of English literature.
Nobody could predict the consequences when ravishing Zuleika Dobson arrives at Oxford, to visit her grandfather, the college warden. Formerly a governess, she has landed on the occupation of prestidigitator, and thanks to her overwhelming beauty—and to a lesser extent her professional talents—she takes the town by storm, gaining admittance to her grandfather's college. It is there, at the institution inspired by Beerbohm's own alma mater, that she falls in love with the Duke of Dorset, who duly adores her in return. Ever aware of appearances, however, Zuleika breaks the Duke's heart when she decides that she must abandon the match.
The epidemic of heartache that proceeds to overcome the academic town makes for some of the best comic writing in the history of English literature.
252 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1911
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About the author
Max Beerbohm
209books88followersSir Henry Maximilian "Max" Beerbohm was an English essayist, parodist and caricaturist.
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October 6, 2023
LA CUGINA DI DORIAN GRAY
Sir Max Beerbohm (1872 � 1956) fu anche pittore e disegnatore di caricature. Qui un suo lavoro del 1916 esposto alla tate Gallery.
Che cosa succede quando un dandy incontra una femme fatale? Chi dei due si piega, chi si spezza?
Il dandy presente in queste pagine, il Duca, si spezza, ma non si piega.
Lei, la femme fatale Zuleika, non si piega e non si spezza.
Risultato: lui muore per propria mano, lei procede innanzi.
Io ricordo che sono arrivato a questo tenero divertissement, l’unico romanzo di Beerbohm credo, pubblicato nel 1911, spronato da E.M.Forster, e dal mio perenne faro Alberto A.
Anche questa (sempre 1916), come le altre a seguire, opera di M. Beerbohm in possesso della Tate Gallery di Londra.
Tutti gli studenti di Oxford si innamorano della loro ospite, Zuleika Dobson, e tra tutti a torreggiare è proprio un dandy per eccellenza, il Duca. Ma se Zuleika è attratta dal duca è proprio perché inizialmente lui si mostra disinteressato: Zuleika è incapace di innamorarsi di chi l’ama, sogna di incontrare l’uomo che sappia resistere al suo fascino fatale.
Zuleika è una professionista nel calpestare il cuore dei suoi spasimanti, fredda, risoluta, e vagamente punitiva. È brava nei giochi di magia e prestidigitazione, sembra capace di sortilegi (come non pensare a Circe, o a Diana cacciatrice!).
M.Beerbohm, 1917.
Zuleika è una bomba in una società misogina come quella oxfordiana e sembra arrivata proprio a punire questi dandy che della donna fanno motteggio.
Beerbohm amava Oxford e probabilmente proprio per questo la sua garbata presa in giro è tanto più divertente. D’altronde, uno dei suoi motti preferiti (un po� in stile Oscar Wilde, suo molto amato e stimato amico) era.
On se moque de ce qu’on aime.
Beerbohm tratta tutto e tutti con tenerezza, con un sorriso umoristico, con benevola ironia, con un certo gusto birichino.
Ora, magari qualcosa mi sono perso: perché di Oxford in generale so poco, e della Oxford dell’epoca, con alle spalle il moralismo vittoriano e davanti la frivolezza edoardiana, del dandismo dominante e dilagante, modello di vita, che contempla eccentricità, estetismo, artificialità, rarefazione, “sensiblerie� so ancora meno.
Ma io comunque ho goduto le divagazioni argute e scherzose, la malia della femme fatale (che a un certo punto viene descritta dotata di sorriso di iena), il tono di commedia elegante e semiseria, satira fantasiosa (uno starnuto distoglie il Duca, raffreddato aspirante suicida, dai suoi neri propositi, e lo rimette in contatto con la vita quotidiana � tutti gli studenti innamorati di Zeleika, e da lei ovviamente respinti, si suicidano per annegamento), il congegno letterario che contempla un demiurgo narratore in terza persona che s’alterna a un io narrante quando il racconto passa in bocca al Duca.
Sir Max Beerbohm (1872 � 1956) fu anche pittore e disegnatore di caricature. Qui un suo lavoro del 1916 esposto alla tate Gallery.
Che cosa succede quando un dandy incontra una femme fatale? Chi dei due si piega, chi si spezza?
Il dandy presente in queste pagine, il Duca, si spezza, ma non si piega.
Lei, la femme fatale Zuleika, non si piega e non si spezza.
Risultato: lui muore per propria mano, lei procede innanzi.
Io ricordo che sono arrivato a questo tenero divertissement, l’unico romanzo di Beerbohm credo, pubblicato nel 1911, spronato da E.M.Forster, e dal mio perenne faro Alberto A.
Anche questa (sempre 1916), come le altre a seguire, opera di M. Beerbohm in possesso della Tate Gallery di Londra.
Tutti gli studenti di Oxford si innamorano della loro ospite, Zuleika Dobson, e tra tutti a torreggiare è proprio un dandy per eccellenza, il Duca. Ma se Zuleika è attratta dal duca è proprio perché inizialmente lui si mostra disinteressato: Zuleika è incapace di innamorarsi di chi l’ama, sogna di incontrare l’uomo che sappia resistere al suo fascino fatale.
Zuleika è una professionista nel calpestare il cuore dei suoi spasimanti, fredda, risoluta, e vagamente punitiva. È brava nei giochi di magia e prestidigitazione, sembra capace di sortilegi (come non pensare a Circe, o a Diana cacciatrice!).
M.Beerbohm, 1917.
Zuleika è una bomba in una società misogina come quella oxfordiana e sembra arrivata proprio a punire questi dandy che della donna fanno motteggio.
Beerbohm amava Oxford e probabilmente proprio per questo la sua garbata presa in giro è tanto più divertente. D’altronde, uno dei suoi motti preferiti (un po� in stile Oscar Wilde, suo molto amato e stimato amico) era.
On se moque de ce qu’on aime.
Beerbohm tratta tutto e tutti con tenerezza, con un sorriso umoristico, con benevola ironia, con un certo gusto birichino.
Ora, magari qualcosa mi sono perso: perché di Oxford in generale so poco, e della Oxford dell’epoca, con alle spalle il moralismo vittoriano e davanti la frivolezza edoardiana, del dandismo dominante e dilagante, modello di vita, che contempla eccentricità, estetismo, artificialità, rarefazione, “sensiblerie� so ancora meno.
Ma io comunque ho goduto le divagazioni argute e scherzose, la malia della femme fatale (che a un certo punto viene descritta dotata di sorriso di iena), il tono di commedia elegante e semiseria, satira fantasiosa (uno starnuto distoglie il Duca, raffreddato aspirante suicida, dai suoi neri propositi, e lo rimette in contatto con la vita quotidiana � tutti gli studenti innamorati di Zeleika, e da lei ovviamente respinti, si suicidano per annegamento), il congegno letterario che contempla un demiurgo narratore in terza persona che s’alterna a un io narrante quando il racconto passa in bocca al Duca.
July 26, 2016
An exquisite Edwardian oddity � a sort of magic-realist proto-campus-novel about paranoid sexual fantasy, as related by Beau Brummel or Oscar Wilde.
Our eponymous heroine is a personification of feminine desirability � ‘the toast of two hemispheres�, she has already, before the novel begins, ‘ranged in triumphal nomady� around the capitals of Europe; Paris falls prostrate at her feet, Madrid throws a vast bullfight in her honour, the Grand Duke of Petersburg falls in love with her, and the Pope launches an ineffective Bull against her influence. Now, laden with innumerable jewels and dresses, she arrives in Oxford, where her powers seem to reach new heights. Soon, every undergraduate in the city is so obsessed with her that they all resolve to commit suicide in her name.
Zuleika herself is a strangely insubstantial creature, described at one point as ‘a vagrom breeze, warm and delicate, and in league with death�. She cares for nobody. At first, thinking that arch-dandy the Duke of Dorset is impervious to her charms, she falls violently in love with him; but when she discovers that he, too, is crazy for her, she goes off him at once. When men fight over her, instead of intervening she steps back, eyes dilating. The old truism about how over-interest is unattractive here finds unusually strong expression.
There have been arguments over the polarity of Max Beerbohm's sexuality; I have to say, this would seem an unusual novel to write if you didn't have at least some interest in women, although certainly Zuleika Dobson represents a rather nervous and overawed (if very funny) view of them. Then again, perhaps he was gay as a window and the whole mass suicide thing is meant to be a satire on heterosexual relationships.
Either way, what makes this book such a total joy to read is Beerbohm's ornate, precise prose style, which allows him a mastery of various comic effects � irony, bathos, conversational wit. Objectionable characters are dismissed casually as being ‘odious with the worst abominations of perfumery� (a phrase to steal), or in the case of one unfortunate individual,
Beerbohm can employ beautiful throwaway references to � for instance � ‘the ascending susurrus of a silk skirt�, but he can also launch into these gravely portentous ejaculations that I found unaccountably hilarious:
Having spent all of my twenties compiling vast notebooks of vocabulary from my reading, it is rare now that a book teaches me any new words, but this one sent me gleefully to the dictionary to check such beauties as opetide or disseizin, and left me relishing such coinages as omnisubjugant, virguncule and commorients. Here is a writer with panache, and wit, and superb technical control � and, probably, some issues, but all the more reason to read him and enjoy him. How devastating that this was his only novel: it's a weird, unmissable delight.
Our eponymous heroine is a personification of feminine desirability � ‘the toast of two hemispheres�, she has already, before the novel begins, ‘ranged in triumphal nomady� around the capitals of Europe; Paris falls prostrate at her feet, Madrid throws a vast bullfight in her honour, the Grand Duke of Petersburg falls in love with her, and the Pope launches an ineffective Bull against her influence. Now, laden with innumerable jewels and dresses, she arrives in Oxford, where her powers seem to reach new heights. Soon, every undergraduate in the city is so obsessed with her that they all resolve to commit suicide in her name.
Zuleika herself is a strangely insubstantial creature, described at one point as ‘a vagrom breeze, warm and delicate, and in league with death�. She cares for nobody. At first, thinking that arch-dandy the Duke of Dorset is impervious to her charms, she falls violently in love with him; but when she discovers that he, too, is crazy for her, she goes off him at once. When men fight over her, instead of intervening she steps back, eyes dilating. The old truism about how over-interest is unattractive here finds unusually strong expression.
‘As soon as I grew used to the thought that they were going to die for me, I simply couldn't stand them. Poor boys! it was as much as I could do not to tell them I wished them dead already.�
There have been arguments over the polarity of Max Beerbohm's sexuality; I have to say, this would seem an unusual novel to write if you didn't have at least some interest in women, although certainly Zuleika Dobson represents a rather nervous and overawed (if very funny) view of them. Then again, perhaps he was gay as a window and the whole mass suicide thing is meant to be a satire on heterosexual relationships.
Either way, what makes this book such a total joy to read is Beerbohm's ornate, precise prose style, which allows him a mastery of various comic effects � irony, bathos, conversational wit. Objectionable characters are dismissed casually as being ‘odious with the worst abominations of perfumery� (a phrase to steal), or in the case of one unfortunate individual,
looking like nothing as much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan.
Beerbohm can employ beautiful throwaway references to � for instance � ‘the ascending susurrus of a silk skirt�, but he can also launch into these gravely portentous ejaculations that I found unaccountably hilarious:
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic.
Having spent all of my twenties compiling vast notebooks of vocabulary from my reading, it is rare now that a book teaches me any new words, but this one sent me gleefully to the dictionary to check such beauties as opetide or disseizin, and left me relishing such coinages as omnisubjugant, virguncule and commorients. Here is a writer with panache, and wit, and superb technical control � and, probably, some issues, but all the more reason to read him and enjoy him. How devastating that this was his only novel: it's a weird, unmissable delight.
April 16, 2019
This is, without doubt, one of the most remarkable novels in the English language. There really is nothing else like it, neither in the style in which it is hewn nor in its odd blend of gentility and pitch black satire and playful authorial first-person flights of fancy. And it's hardly likely that a more frivolous book has ever been written so well. The book is overwritten not to a fault, but to its credit. The dazzling turning of the phrase is Beerbohm's great strength. Every sentence is a marvel. Having said that, it is definitely not for all tastes. In fact, it took me three attempts to get into this book, the first being all the way back in the early 1980s when I bought it! This is one you have to be ready for, or Beerbohm's meticulous, verbose style and oddly humorous conceits will stymie you.
Example:
Whereas you or I might write: "He tended to not become drunk from wine like his companions," Beerbohm writes:
"His was a head that had always hitherto defied the grape. But he thought that to-day, by all he had gone through, by all the shocks he had suffered, and the strains he had steeled himself to bear, as well as by the actual malady that gripped him, he might perchance have been sapped enough to experience by reaction that cordial glow of which he had now and again seen symptoms in his fellows."
Without having read any of Beerbohm's other fiction for reference, I have to think nonetheless that the high-flown stiltedness is meant to spoof the pretensions of academia.
The story's "plot" hardly prepares one for the arsenal of tricks Beerbohm displays. It is probably appropriate, then, that his title heroine, Zuleika, wins her fame as a traveling magician. In this book, she has been invited to stay at Oxford University by her grandfather, a doddering curmudgeon who fails to realize the consequences when Zuleika's presence on the campus leads to absurd mass hysteria and tragedy. It seems there is something magical in her airs, and in the air, when she arrives, and every man falls insanely in love with her. Most smitten, but not showing it in his steely aristocratic arrogance, is the Duke of Dorset. For Zuleika, this is a novelty, for she cannot bring herself to love men who worship and pander to her. Unfortunately for the Duke, he doesn't realize this, and when she turns her attentions to him he becomes as openly smitten as the others. The consequence is that she spurns him and he promises to her that he will commit suicide in "revenge," a gesture that Dobson appreciates -- as long as he actually goes through with it. Trouble is, the idea spreads among the entire campus!
A good deal of the book after this set-up is devoted to the impending suicide of the Duke, and depending on your patience this long section will either seem interminable or deeply moving. For me, it was the latter.
Along the way, Beerbohm throws verbiage at you that will greatly expand your vocabulary. There are running jokes and phrases that are repeated by different characters. Sometimes he steps out of the narrative to remind you that this is a story, and even though it's fiction he pretends that it's an accurate historical account. He even "argues" with you, the reader, telling you to stop interrupting the telling of the story with your questions or second-guesses!
He also employs a sort of magical realism, which I usually hate, but here is charming. The Roman statues on the campus seem to have a mind of their own, wondering about the follies of youth and even wishing to play matchmakers. A painting of a former campus luminary in the Junta club harbors a ghost that becomes offended by a student's comment and deigns to fight "a duel" and hurl 18th century curses at him, completely unknown to the student mortals. The Goddess Clio and the God Zeus guide the author himself, allowing him to float ghostlike, omnisciently over the action. The ghosts of Chopin and George Sand look over the Duke's shoulder as he plays his "farewell" piano concert. Two mysterious owls are uncaged by the gods whenever a member of the ducal line is to die. Unfortunately, the gods uncage them a day too early. Fates meant by the gods for some befall others. The playful intercession of the gods over the action lends a classical flavor to this bizarre campus story as well as being absurdly funny.
This one-of-a-kind novel could be the dead white male's stiff-upper-lip version of The Virgin Suicides, and the mercilessless of its femme fatale puts me to mind of the girl in Pierre Louys' The Woman and the Puppet, but Zuleika is not so much a vicious tease as an innocent who receives pleasure, though not love, from her notoriety. Beerbohm makes it clear that she is not a narcissist, but there are elements of it in her vanity.
Zuleika is a literary construct, no doubt; something of her time and defined mainly by her effect on men. But that and the plot are not the book's strengths. There are obvious cautionary themes in this about the herd mentality, extreme sacrifice and noble aristocratic honor, as well as about the inevitable misreading of romantic intentions between men and women.
Amid the fun, there also are thoughtful nuggets, such as these:
"They held that the future was theirs, a glorious asset, far more
glorious than the past. But a theory, as the Duke saw, is one thing, an emotion another. It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn't. The future doesn't exist. The past does. For, whereas all men can learn, the gift of prophecy has died out. A man cannot work up in his breast any real excitement about what possibly won't happen. He cannot very well help being sentimentally interested in what he knows has happened."
"Even you, unassuming reader, go about with a vague notion that in your case, somehow, the ultimate demand of nature will be waived. The Duke, until he conceived his sudden desire to die, had deemed himself certainly exempt. And now, as he sat staring at his window, he saw in the paling of the night the presage of the dawn of his own last day."
"There lay Oxford far beneath me, like a map in grey and black and silver. All that I had known only as great single things I saw now outspread in apposition, and tiny; tiny symbols, as it were, of themselves, greatly symbolising their oneness. There they lay, these multitudinous and disparate quadrangles, all their rivalries merged in the making of a great catholic pattern. And the roofs of the buildings around them seemed level with their lawns. No higher the roofs of the very towers. Up from their tiny segment of the earth's spinning surface they stood negligible beneath infinity. And new, too, quite new, in eternity; transient upstarts. I saw Oxford as a place that had no more past and no more future than a mining-camp. I smiled down. O hoary and unassailable mushroom!... But if a man carry his sense of proportion far enough, lo! he is back at the point from which he started. He knows that eternity, as conceived by him, is but an instant in eternity, and infinity but a speck in infinity. How should they belittle the things near to him?... Oxford was venerable and magical, after all, and enduring. Aye, and not because she would endure was it the less lamentable that the young lives within her walls were like to be taken. My equanimity was gone; and a tear fell on Oxford."
"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost--he becomes just an unit in unreason... A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought."
----
Were it ever thus...
The book is a masterpiece.
Example:
Whereas you or I might write: "He tended to not become drunk from wine like his companions," Beerbohm writes:
"His was a head that had always hitherto defied the grape. But he thought that to-day, by all he had gone through, by all the shocks he had suffered, and the strains he had steeled himself to bear, as well as by the actual malady that gripped him, he might perchance have been sapped enough to experience by reaction that cordial glow of which he had now and again seen symptoms in his fellows."
Without having read any of Beerbohm's other fiction for reference, I have to think nonetheless that the high-flown stiltedness is meant to spoof the pretensions of academia.
The story's "plot" hardly prepares one for the arsenal of tricks Beerbohm displays. It is probably appropriate, then, that his title heroine, Zuleika, wins her fame as a traveling magician. In this book, she has been invited to stay at Oxford University by her grandfather, a doddering curmudgeon who fails to realize the consequences when Zuleika's presence on the campus leads to absurd mass hysteria and tragedy. It seems there is something magical in her airs, and in the air, when she arrives, and every man falls insanely in love with her. Most smitten, but not showing it in his steely aristocratic arrogance, is the Duke of Dorset. For Zuleika, this is a novelty, for she cannot bring herself to love men who worship and pander to her. Unfortunately for the Duke, he doesn't realize this, and when she turns her attentions to him he becomes as openly smitten as the others. The consequence is that she spurns him and he promises to her that he will commit suicide in "revenge," a gesture that Dobson appreciates -- as long as he actually goes through with it. Trouble is, the idea spreads among the entire campus!
A good deal of the book after this set-up is devoted to the impending suicide of the Duke, and depending on your patience this long section will either seem interminable or deeply moving. For me, it was the latter.
Along the way, Beerbohm throws verbiage at you that will greatly expand your vocabulary. There are running jokes and phrases that are repeated by different characters. Sometimes he steps out of the narrative to remind you that this is a story, and even though it's fiction he pretends that it's an accurate historical account. He even "argues" with you, the reader, telling you to stop interrupting the telling of the story with your questions or second-guesses!
He also employs a sort of magical realism, which I usually hate, but here is charming. The Roman statues on the campus seem to have a mind of their own, wondering about the follies of youth and even wishing to play matchmakers. A painting of a former campus luminary in the Junta club harbors a ghost that becomes offended by a student's comment and deigns to fight "a duel" and hurl 18th century curses at him, completely unknown to the student mortals. The Goddess Clio and the God Zeus guide the author himself, allowing him to float ghostlike, omnisciently over the action. The ghosts of Chopin and George Sand look over the Duke's shoulder as he plays his "farewell" piano concert. Two mysterious owls are uncaged by the gods whenever a member of the ducal line is to die. Unfortunately, the gods uncage them a day too early. Fates meant by the gods for some befall others. The playful intercession of the gods over the action lends a classical flavor to this bizarre campus story as well as being absurdly funny.
This one-of-a-kind novel could be the dead white male's stiff-upper-lip version of The Virgin Suicides, and the mercilessless of its femme fatale puts me to mind of the girl in Pierre Louys' The Woman and the Puppet, but Zuleika is not so much a vicious tease as an innocent who receives pleasure, though not love, from her notoriety. Beerbohm makes it clear that she is not a narcissist, but there are elements of it in her vanity.
Zuleika is a literary construct, no doubt; something of her time and defined mainly by her effect on men. But that and the plot are not the book's strengths. There are obvious cautionary themes in this about the herd mentality, extreme sacrifice and noble aristocratic honor, as well as about the inevitable misreading of romantic intentions between men and women.
Amid the fun, there also are thoughtful nuggets, such as these:
"They held that the future was theirs, a glorious asset, far more
glorious than the past. But a theory, as the Duke saw, is one thing, an emotion another. It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn't. The future doesn't exist. The past does. For, whereas all men can learn, the gift of prophecy has died out. A man cannot work up in his breast any real excitement about what possibly won't happen. He cannot very well help being sentimentally interested in what he knows has happened."
"Even you, unassuming reader, go about with a vague notion that in your case, somehow, the ultimate demand of nature will be waived. The Duke, until he conceived his sudden desire to die, had deemed himself certainly exempt. And now, as he sat staring at his window, he saw in the paling of the night the presage of the dawn of his own last day."
"There lay Oxford far beneath me, like a map in grey and black and silver. All that I had known only as great single things I saw now outspread in apposition, and tiny; tiny symbols, as it were, of themselves, greatly symbolising their oneness. There they lay, these multitudinous and disparate quadrangles, all their rivalries merged in the making of a great catholic pattern. And the roofs of the buildings around them seemed level with their lawns. No higher the roofs of the very towers. Up from their tiny segment of the earth's spinning surface they stood negligible beneath infinity. And new, too, quite new, in eternity; transient upstarts. I saw Oxford as a place that had no more past and no more future than a mining-camp. I smiled down. O hoary and unassailable mushroom!... But if a man carry his sense of proportion far enough, lo! he is back at the point from which he started. He knows that eternity, as conceived by him, is but an instant in eternity, and infinity but a speck in infinity. How should they belittle the things near to him?... Oxford was venerable and magical, after all, and enduring. Aye, and not because she would endure was it the less lamentable that the young lives within her walls were like to be taken. My equanimity was gone; and a tear fell on Oxford."
"You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost--he becomes just an unit in unreason... A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought."
----
Were it ever thus...
The book is a masterpiece.
Read
December 11, 2017Dear God that was excruciating. A comic novel of sparkling wit and effervescent ya di yah, aka a painfully dated, mannered, twee, horrifyingly self-satisfied period piece with about two good lines that have survived the century since its writing. "Unfunny" isn't the half of it; Beerbohm must have been the biggest bore unhung on this basis. Recommended for dullards who go on and on and *on* about having been to Oxford, and literally nobody else.
August 22, 2018
This is an oddity. It was Beerbohm's only novel and is a satire of university life at Oxford in the very early twentieth century. There is no need to worry about spoilers, the book does that for you very near the beginning. Most of the characters are as shallow as puddles. There are bursts of magic realism occasional ghosts, Greek gods and lots of style with no depth.
The story is about a young woman who is very beautiful; she has a successful conjuring act (although she is not very good at it). She visits her grandfather who is warden of an Oxford college. All the undergraduates fall in love with her, except one. She obviously falls in love with him. When he returns her love she quite obviously falls out of love with him. He despairs and declares he will dies for her. Eventually the whole undergraduate population (all male of course) commit mass suicide in the river after the rowing. The Oxford colleges don't notice they are missing and carry on. Zuleika heads off to Cambridge at the end of the book.
Completely off the wall and very funny in parts with lots of classical references; wonderfully satirical account of romantic love. This is a particular type of humour and is an acquired taste, I can understand why some people might hate it or find it boring.
The story is about a young woman who is very beautiful; she has a successful conjuring act (although she is not very good at it). She visits her grandfather who is warden of an Oxford college. All the undergraduates fall in love with her, except one. She obviously falls in love with him. When he returns her love she quite obviously falls out of love with him. He despairs and declares he will dies for her. Eventually the whole undergraduate population (all male of course) commit mass suicide in the river after the rowing. The Oxford colleges don't notice they are missing and carry on. Zuleika heads off to Cambridge at the end of the book.
Completely off the wall and very funny in parts with lots of classical references; wonderfully satirical account of romantic love. This is a particular type of humour and is an acquired taste, I can understand why some people might hate it or find it boring.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 29, 2015
It didn't take me long to realize my leg was being pulled. This is a satire, a farce really, of Edwardian era life at Oxford University. Beerbohm is poking fun at everyone and everything. Zuleika (pronounced leek, not like) is a femme fatale as striking and deadly as Becky Sharp, although much more naive. She lays waste to the entire undergraduate population of Oxford, and at the end is looking for the train schedule to Cambridge. Comedy with a touch of darkness, this novel is well written and very entertaining. Modern Library liked it well enough to put it on their list of 100 best English language novels of the 20th century. It's also on Guardian's list of 1,000 books to read.
September 15, 2009
Beerbohm was famous during his era for his witty, airy essays and short works of various types. I believe this was his only novel.
There were a number of novels about femme fatales* during that era, after Benson's Dodo, and Hope's (much more witty and readable) Dolly Dialogues--and at the serious end, Henry James' various lapidary, even microscopic looks at females who destroyed men's lives--but this one was meant to be satire. Zuleika, born poor, was an unhappy governess, ignorant and uninterested in academics, and pretty on top of it, so she seldom lasted long at any place. As soon as the house's young master took a look at her, she'd be sent packing . . . but not before one son taught her conjuring.
She soon was world famous for her conjuring act, and rich, but her heart was untouched. She comes to visit an old relative in Oxford, and instantly falls "in love" with a Duke just because he scorns her--as he falls in love with her because she scorns him. Then all of Oxford falls in love with her, and all the young men commit suicide for love.
This was apparently funny at the time. It was not funny to me--it was actually kind of painful, not the suicides of characters with all the depth of kleenex, but because of the Oxford depicted there. It really was the old world, the Oxford Evelyn Waugh, for example, badly wanted to belong to, if only he could have been born a few years earlier and much higher on the social scale then he was. It was Lord Peter Wimsy's Oxford. When you consider that this book came out in 1911, it's difficult not to imagine these swan-like young men sent off to the Somme, a few years later, had they not expired for love of a very, very boring girl with a pretty face.
Three stars for its being interesting as a cultural artifact, but as a story? Meh. A few funny lines, some wit, but most of it very, very dated.
*It could be that Beerbohm was making fun of Mary Sue characters way back in 1911, which idea would almost be enough for another star, but she was still boring to read about.
There were a number of novels about femme fatales* during that era, after Benson's Dodo, and Hope's (much more witty and readable) Dolly Dialogues--and at the serious end, Henry James' various lapidary, even microscopic looks at females who destroyed men's lives--but this one was meant to be satire. Zuleika, born poor, was an unhappy governess, ignorant and uninterested in academics, and pretty on top of it, so she seldom lasted long at any place. As soon as the house's young master took a look at her, she'd be sent packing . . . but not before one son taught her conjuring.
She soon was world famous for her conjuring act, and rich, but her heart was untouched. She comes to visit an old relative in Oxford, and instantly falls "in love" with a Duke just because he scorns her--as he falls in love with her because she scorns him. Then all of Oxford falls in love with her, and all the young men commit suicide for love.
This was apparently funny at the time. It was not funny to me--it was actually kind of painful, not the suicides of characters with all the depth of kleenex, but because of the Oxford depicted there. It really was the old world, the Oxford Evelyn Waugh, for example, badly wanted to belong to, if only he could have been born a few years earlier and much higher on the social scale then he was. It was Lord Peter Wimsy's Oxford. When you consider that this book came out in 1911, it's difficult not to imagine these swan-like young men sent off to the Somme, a few years later, had they not expired for love of a very, very boring girl with a pretty face.
Three stars for its being interesting as a cultural artifact, but as a story? Meh. A few funny lines, some wit, but most of it very, very dated.
*It could be that Beerbohm was making fun of Mary Sue characters way back in 1911, which idea would almost be enough for another star, but she was still boring to read about.
July 8, 2013
What a strange book. I found it difficult to get through, despite its short length and its occasional brilliance (some would, I guess, say consistent brilliance).
Written in an overwrought style that parodies the pomposity and bloviation of academese, yet studded with a few true gems (I thought, when I read it the first time, that the line "Death cancels all engagements" was quoting something, but it actually appears to be a Beerbohm original), Zuleika Dobson follows the titular heroine as she...well, the only thing she really does is arrive at Oxford and drive hundreds of young men to suicide for love of her.
As near as I can tell, this is a satire of and about appearances. Are we what we pretend to be? And if not, which is more important: our nature or our appearance? I won't say whether ZD answers either question, but there are some great passages discussing it.
One main overarching problem I had with ZD was the misogyny. Probably people give Beerbohm a pass here because no character is safe from his withering satire, but I felt that Zuleika herself came out by far the worst. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed this if I hadn't simultaneously been reading , but I don't buy that either. Zuleika is flighty, entitled, emotional, haughty, and has grown rich and famous (despite her mediocrity as a conjurer) purely by trading on her looks. Looks are, in fact, her only redeeming quality. And though the mass suicide makes the entire male sex look like a bunch of gullible oafs, her satisfaction after said mass suicide seems much worse. And Katie, the only other main female character, isn't much better, though to go into detail about that would spoil some of the few important plot developments.
In short: by turns, excellent, facile, lapidary, infuriating, and, above all, so very English.
Written in an overwrought style that parodies the pomposity and bloviation of academese, yet studded with a few true gems (I thought, when I read it the first time, that the line "Death cancels all engagements" was quoting something, but it actually appears to be a Beerbohm original), Zuleika Dobson follows the titular heroine as she...well, the only thing she really does is arrive at Oxford and drive hundreds of young men to suicide for love of her.
As near as I can tell, this is a satire of and about appearances. Are we what we pretend to be? And if not, which is more important: our nature or our appearance? I won't say whether ZD answers either question, but there are some great passages discussing it.
One main overarching problem I had with ZD was the misogyny. Probably people give Beerbohm a pass here because no character is safe from his withering satire, but I felt that Zuleika herself came out by far the worst. Maybe I wouldn't have noticed this if I hadn't simultaneously been reading , but I don't buy that either. Zuleika is flighty, entitled, emotional, haughty, and has grown rich and famous (despite her mediocrity as a conjurer) purely by trading on her looks. Looks are, in fact, her only redeeming quality. And though the mass suicide makes the entire male sex look like a bunch of gullible oafs, her satisfaction after said mass suicide seems much worse. And Katie, the only other main female character, isn't much better, though to go into detail about that would spoil some of the few important plot developments.
In short: by turns, excellent, facile, lapidary, infuriating, and, above all, so very English.
July 30, 2014
The advisors who put this book on the Modern Library Top 100 should be taken out and shot!
The fact that the Modern Library had to recently print this edition, otherwise no one would have ever found it, shows its obscurity (now available at your local used bookstore). I mean no one reads Ulysses and you can find that anywhere.
A tale of the beautiful, up from the working class Zuleika, granddaughter of the Oxford dean, who visits the college and has everyone fall in love with her.
This satire of Edwardian England is a pain, or more of chore to read, as social satire is peculiar to its era and much is lost on the reader, ok me anyway. Even so there are some funny moments that shine through.
The positives are you learn something of Beerbohm who was popular in his day and Zuleika is referenced in another ML100 novel 'The Magus' where two women are compared to Zuleika, which makes you feel well read, amazing.
The fact that the Modern Library had to recently print this edition, otherwise no one would have ever found it, shows its obscurity (now available at your local used bookstore). I mean no one reads Ulysses and you can find that anywhere.
A tale of the beautiful, up from the working class Zuleika, granddaughter of the Oxford dean, who visits the college and has everyone fall in love with her.
This satire of Edwardian England is a pain, or more of chore to read, as social satire is peculiar to its era and much is lost on the reader, ok me anyway. Even so there are some funny moments that shine through.
The positives are you learn something of Beerbohm who was popular in his day and Zuleika is referenced in another ML100 novel 'The Magus' where two women are compared to Zuleika, which makes you feel well read, amazing.
September 12, 2018
-Good day. I wish to speak to a Mr. David, spelled with a little d. From the Isle of Long.
-It’s Lon G-eye-land.
-My apologies, David. Long Island.
-Ach, it’s pronounced…forget it. I’m David.
-Young man, this is the matriculation department at Oxford University, England. My name is Miss Smaller Words and I work for Mr. Wearing Your Pants Too High with a Tucked-In Shirt and Assistant to the Duke of Shropshire, and third cousin to the Baroness Nose Tilted Up.
-Yeah?
-He would like to speak with you, Mr. David spelled with a little d. Would you hold the line?
-Umm, don’t see no line.
-It’s an expression. Would you please wait a minute?
-Yeah.
-Hello? Mr. Wearing Your Pants Too High here. Do I have a Mr. David with a small d on the line?
-What is it with the line? I do not see any lines.
-Sir, it is an idiom. Can you hear me, Sir?
-Uh huh.
-I have your application to attend our University in front of me.
-Oh, yeah. I forgot. Oxford was my ‘safety� school. I also applied to Ithaca, Syracuse (think Jordache), and Ohio State. It is so rainy where you are.
-You need not worry about English rain, Sir. I called only as…ha…excuse me…ha, ha, ha…a representative of this department, Sir. Haaa……�.Pardon me again, Sir, but we have all looked at, Nay, studied exhaustively, your application, Sir.
-You laughing, dude?
-Sir, We are all former graduates and now pensioners, and we work in this department. You afforded us the best amusement since the days when we studied Clio. We may even hang your application, framed, on the halls of Merton.
-Ooookay. Does that mean that you want me to attend your school?
-Hardly, Sir. To pass through the gates into Oxford, one needs substantially more than an elementary school education. Haaa……�(voices in the background in hysterics).
-Well, I don’t know. It seems I have created a bunch of smiles and giggles there. And I have more of them for you…in Latin. The timing is different, but the jokes are excellent. When was the last time you Alta Kachas (ghetto Latin meaning elders) had a good romp?
-I do not recall, Sir. But a justifiable point you have made.
-Word! So, am I in or not, homie?
-(Silent pause) We could use a dose of levity around here. Let me reconsider.
-You do that. By the way, is it true that there are like, zero, hot chicks there?
-Plenty, Sir. Studying and comparing notes by the Main Quad, between three to four in the afternoon. Ahem…but, of course, I would not know. I am an academic. Currently, I am only infatuated with the writings of Shelley and Byron. Scholarly material.
-How about Zuleika Dobson? Did you ever meet her when you were a junior there in 1910?
-Sir, she is a fictional character. She never existed…in the flesh, if you will.
-Okay, then. Gotta run Mr. Wearing Your Pants. Give my regards to the queen. Lox Vobiscum.
Click.
**Գٰ’aٱ**
This guy Beerbohm wrote one novel, Zuleika Dobson. Before color television was invented and after tea, of course. Crumpets anyone? Please pass the jam, William.
Miss Dobson is what the French call a ‘femme fatale.� And in Lon GIsland, specifically ‘the five towns,� we would refer to her as…a worthwhile challenge in which we would ultimately fail. Do you think we live here for the disgusting ocean? No, we reside here for the sole purpose of asking the ladies if they would like to dine in ‘Great Neck.� Almost as good as a yacht, but not quite.
Էɲ�
She, Zuleika, has moved to live with the ‘Warden� of Oxford University. He is her grandpa (grand pa-pa in England) and also a macher (big shot) at the school. She is without any doubt, in any undergraduate’s mind there, the most beautiful young lady in the world, and she knows it.
Her beauty has literally confused these previously sedulous, assiduous minds. The students at Oxford, all of them, have become unhinged because of her pulchritude.
And so this fabulous satire begins. There is so much good stuff in this story. I have not the time, the patience to get into it.
England has produced many good writers. But this man, Max, as he is known to people of culture, is right up there with their best.
This book is so good. Nay (I like that word). This is a great book.
Mr. Dickens, and Shakey, would you be so kind as to move aside?
Thank you.
Now, Max, you stand here. In the front of the line.
-It’s Lon G-eye-land.
-My apologies, David. Long Island.
-Ach, it’s pronounced…forget it. I’m David.
-Young man, this is the matriculation department at Oxford University, England. My name is Miss Smaller Words and I work for Mr. Wearing Your Pants Too High with a Tucked-In Shirt and Assistant to the Duke of Shropshire, and third cousin to the Baroness Nose Tilted Up.
-Yeah?
-He would like to speak with you, Mr. David spelled with a little d. Would you hold the line?
-Umm, don’t see no line.
-It’s an expression. Would you please wait a minute?
-Yeah.
-Hello? Mr. Wearing Your Pants Too High here. Do I have a Mr. David with a small d on the line?
-What is it with the line? I do not see any lines.
-Sir, it is an idiom. Can you hear me, Sir?
-Uh huh.
-I have your application to attend our University in front of me.
-Oh, yeah. I forgot. Oxford was my ‘safety� school. I also applied to Ithaca, Syracuse (think Jordache), and Ohio State. It is so rainy where you are.
-You need not worry about English rain, Sir. I called only as…ha…excuse me…ha, ha, ha…a representative of this department, Sir. Haaa……�.Pardon me again, Sir, but we have all looked at, Nay, studied exhaustively, your application, Sir.
-You laughing, dude?
-Sir, We are all former graduates and now pensioners, and we work in this department. You afforded us the best amusement since the days when we studied Clio. We may even hang your application, framed, on the halls of Merton.
-Ooookay. Does that mean that you want me to attend your school?
-Hardly, Sir. To pass through the gates into Oxford, one needs substantially more than an elementary school education. Haaa……�(voices in the background in hysterics).
-Well, I don’t know. It seems I have created a bunch of smiles and giggles there. And I have more of them for you…in Latin. The timing is different, but the jokes are excellent. When was the last time you Alta Kachas (ghetto Latin meaning elders) had a good romp?
-I do not recall, Sir. But a justifiable point you have made.
-Word! So, am I in or not, homie?
-(Silent pause) We could use a dose of levity around here. Let me reconsider.
-You do that. By the way, is it true that there are like, zero, hot chicks there?
-Plenty, Sir. Studying and comparing notes by the Main Quad, between three to four in the afternoon. Ahem…but, of course, I would not know. I am an academic. Currently, I am only infatuated with the writings of Shelley and Byron. Scholarly material.
-How about Zuleika Dobson? Did you ever meet her when you were a junior there in 1910?
-Sir, she is a fictional character. She never existed…in the flesh, if you will.
-Okay, then. Gotta run Mr. Wearing Your Pants. Give my regards to the queen. Lox Vobiscum.
Click.
**Գٰ’aٱ**
This guy Beerbohm wrote one novel, Zuleika Dobson. Before color television was invented and after tea, of course. Crumpets anyone? Please pass the jam, William.
Miss Dobson is what the French call a ‘femme fatale.� And in Lon GIsland, specifically ‘the five towns,� we would refer to her as…a worthwhile challenge in which we would ultimately fail. Do you think we live here for the disgusting ocean? No, we reside here for the sole purpose of asking the ladies if they would like to dine in ‘Great Neck.� Almost as good as a yacht, but not quite.
Էɲ�
She, Zuleika, has moved to live with the ‘Warden� of Oxford University. He is her grandpa (grand pa-pa in England) and also a macher (big shot) at the school. She is without any doubt, in any undergraduate’s mind there, the most beautiful young lady in the world, and she knows it.
Her beauty has literally confused these previously sedulous, assiduous minds. The students at Oxford, all of them, have become unhinged because of her pulchritude.
And so this fabulous satire begins. There is so much good stuff in this story. I have not the time, the patience to get into it.
England has produced many good writers. But this man, Max, as he is known to people of culture, is right up there with their best.
This book is so good. Nay (I like that word). This is a great book.
Mr. Dickens, and Shakey, would you be so kind as to move aside?
Thank you.
Now, Max, you stand here. In the front of the line.
April 4, 2017
Zuleika Dobson is one of those rare, brilliant, unclassifiable novels (think Tristram Shandy or Hogg's The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner) that succeeds against all odds, drawing upon a rather implausible premise and peppering the narrative with seemingly haphazard intrusions. The language proves so elevated (for comic effect) that even the most devoted lexicologist stands to expand his or her vocabulary. The references often grasp at the obscure -- although I confess my Attic Greek is rusty. Yet the book is more than a period piece that merely mocks the foibles and absurdities of Edwardian England. It somehow manages to capture the universal, while deeply buried in the particular. Alas, I fear it is one of those novels whose appeal and success simply defy logical explanation. It just works. And even today, it has moments that are still darn funny.
Had this novel been written in the aftermath of World War I, it would have been seen as a dramatic commentary on the ludicrous mass sacrifice of modern warfare. Published as it was several years earlier, it is oddly prescient and also inexplicable in its satire. If I were teaching this novel in a creative writing class, I might warn the students, "Admire Beerbohm's writing--but don't try it at home."
Not an easy bedtime read, but well worth the effort.
Had this novel been written in the aftermath of World War I, it would have been seen as a dramatic commentary on the ludicrous mass sacrifice of modern warfare. Published as it was several years earlier, it is oddly prescient and also inexplicable in its satire. If I were teaching this novel in a creative writing class, I might warn the students, "Admire Beerbohm's writing--but don't try it at home."
Not an easy bedtime read, but well worth the effort.
October 16, 2009
Maybe the way to be a successful writer is to write one really fantastic novel and then that's it. It worked for Harper Lee with . And it worked for Max Beerbohm with which made it's way onto the Modern Library Top 100 List. It's not just a list comprised of boring dead white guys. Some of them are actually pretty good it seems.
The title character is this real hot tamale who arrives in Oxford to visit her grandfather, the Warden of the college. In the short time she is there every student who crosses her path falls in love with her. But she's one of those who refuses to accept the advances of any man who falls for her charms (very similar to Groucho Marx refusing to be a part of any club who would want him as a member I suppose). The dark humor of the story comes when the would-be suitors decide they can not go on living without her.
This is a satire, but done with some class. I found myself thinking of rewatching There's Something About Mary a few times while reading this, in that all of the male characters go to great lengths to win the heart of this one woman. Zuleika is quite the femme fatale and would give Mary a run for her money, however. And I can't imagine her ever going for Brett Favre.
The title character is this real hot tamale who arrives in Oxford to visit her grandfather, the Warden of the college. In the short time she is there every student who crosses her path falls in love with her. But she's one of those who refuses to accept the advances of any man who falls for her charms (very similar to Groucho Marx refusing to be a part of any club who would want him as a member I suppose). The dark humor of the story comes when the would-be suitors decide they can not go on living without her.
This is a satire, but done with some class. I found myself thinking of rewatching There's Something About Mary a few times while reading this, in that all of the male characters go to great lengths to win the heart of this one woman. Zuleika is quite the femme fatale and would give Mary a run for her money, however. And I can't imagine her ever going for Brett Favre.
March 7, 2020
Miss Maureen Guinness lies on a mattress in an autumnal garden reading Zuleika Dobson for the first time, while a gramophone plays 'I must have that man', 1929. L'incantevole figurina schizzata a penna e relativa didascalia mi si piantò in testa molti anni fa, mentre leggevo un bel libro su Cecil Beaton, abilissimo sketcher di bellezze d'epoca, oltre che grande fotografo di moda e non. Tentai invano per anni di reincarnarmi in Miss Guinness, ma Zuleika Dobson risultava editorialmente imprendibile e beffardamente elusivo.
Identica sensazione resta dopo averlo finalmente letto: sospeso fra parodia dandy-romance e rêverie fantastica, il romanzo emana un suo fascino bizzarro, indecifrabile e un po' esasperante, come quando si guardano le foto di Wallis Simpson e ci si chiede cosa diavolo mai ci trovasse il principe del Galles (successive mistress di successivi principi del Galles non hanno fatto che aumentare le perplessità, a dire il vero).
Identica sensazione resta dopo averlo finalmente letto: sospeso fra parodia dandy-romance e rêverie fantastica, il romanzo emana un suo fascino bizzarro, indecifrabile e un po' esasperante, come quando si guardano le foto di Wallis Simpson e ci si chiede cosa diavolo mai ci trovasse il principe del Galles (successive mistress di successivi principi del Galles non hanno fatto che aumentare le perplessità, a dire il vero).
December 18, 2023
I am a big fan of the late Victorian/Edwardian comic novel. How I’ve guffawed at Grossmith’s , tittered at so I was expecting some laughs along amid the 250 pages of this novel. Laugh I did not.
Perhaps it was the sheer absurdity of its premise which stripped it of its everyman relatability. Zuleika is an orphan who has made a name for herself as a magician. She has travelled the world and performed to adoring crowds (her beauty more key to her success than her entertainment skills as even an infatuated suitor will attest to her show being so bad as to be embarrassing) and has come to visit her estranged grandfather in Oxford where he is a Don of one of the college’s. There every young man’s head is turned by her but the only man she is interested in is the Duke, and her interested is only piqued because he does not talk to her and leaves early with out bidding her goodbye at a college dinner. When they meet again and he asks her to marry him she immediately falls out of love with him (in an early example of the Groucho Marx joke that he wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have him). The Duke then feels he must follow convention and kill himself, which she is more than happy with as long as he shouts her name just before the deed so everyone knows he has died for love of her. This is established early on in the book and the rest of it is filled with their tedious interactions and the scores of other male students who all agree to follow the Duke’s lead and kill themselves over Zuleika.
I understand it is a satire. Written around the time women were demanding access to these educational institutions, it is a commentary on the opposing argument that women would distract the studies of young men. It looks at the nature of tradition, manners and the ‘done thing� (in the end the Duke decides not to kill himself for Zuleika but has to do so because he receives a telegram reporting that the omen that foretells the death of the current Duke has been seen). It looks at the nature of beauty � we are told that Zuleika could not be called beautiful in any conventional sense and is then described with a list of attributes that adhere very closely to the current look. But the satire doesn’t work for me because the events and the characters are so far removed from reality. The Duke is fabulously wealthy � there’s a long passage where he lists his homes, his titles and his possessions, and as described Zuleika is a walking Impulse ad and they both breathe the rarefied air of Oxford. Their problems and actions are too removed from the everyman to be amused by shared experience (one of the funniest sections of Three Men is the description of a man trying to hang a picture).
While hard to relate to I was struck by its description of social contagion � a phenomenon that is discussed widely today on relation to young people and especially related to suicide � and I wondered if it was an issue then or if it is a more recent concern.
Having said how much I didn’t love this book there were moments of sheer joy in the writing. There is something so marvellous about the language and description that authors used at the time, humorous and bordering on the ridiculous but so very evocative. Take this for example,
”The clock in the warden’s drawing-room had just struck eight, and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that only with a pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table were they comparable. Incomparable quite, the figure and face and vesture of him who ended in them.�
I mean when have feet ever been described so (except perhaps on specialist interest websites) and the killer is the notion of someone ending in their feet.
And this description of a young man,
”…I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan…�
It’s the layering of the very specific insults that make it so funny.
It is a shame that this is the only book Beerbohm ever wrote as with writing like that I might well have loved a different offering from him.
Perhaps it was the sheer absurdity of its premise which stripped it of its everyman relatability. Zuleika is an orphan who has made a name for herself as a magician. She has travelled the world and performed to adoring crowds (her beauty more key to her success than her entertainment skills as even an infatuated suitor will attest to her show being so bad as to be embarrassing) and has come to visit her estranged grandfather in Oxford where he is a Don of one of the college’s. There every young man’s head is turned by her but the only man she is interested in is the Duke, and her interested is only piqued because he does not talk to her and leaves early with out bidding her goodbye at a college dinner. When they meet again and he asks her to marry him she immediately falls out of love with him (in an early example of the Groucho Marx joke that he wouldn’t want to be a member of any club that would have him). The Duke then feels he must follow convention and kill himself, which she is more than happy with as long as he shouts her name just before the deed so everyone knows he has died for love of her. This is established early on in the book and the rest of it is filled with their tedious interactions and the scores of other male students who all agree to follow the Duke’s lead and kill themselves over Zuleika.
I understand it is a satire. Written around the time women were demanding access to these educational institutions, it is a commentary on the opposing argument that women would distract the studies of young men. It looks at the nature of tradition, manners and the ‘done thing� (in the end the Duke decides not to kill himself for Zuleika but has to do so because he receives a telegram reporting that the omen that foretells the death of the current Duke has been seen). It looks at the nature of beauty � we are told that Zuleika could not be called beautiful in any conventional sense and is then described with a list of attributes that adhere very closely to the current look. But the satire doesn’t work for me because the events and the characters are so far removed from reality. The Duke is fabulously wealthy � there’s a long passage where he lists his homes, his titles and his possessions, and as described Zuleika is a walking Impulse ad and they both breathe the rarefied air of Oxford. Their problems and actions are too removed from the everyman to be amused by shared experience (one of the funniest sections of Three Men is the description of a man trying to hang a picture).
While hard to relate to I was struck by its description of social contagion � a phenomenon that is discussed widely today on relation to young people and especially related to suicide � and I wondered if it was an issue then or if it is a more recent concern.
Having said how much I didn’t love this book there were moments of sheer joy in the writing. There is something so marvellous about the language and description that authors used at the time, humorous and bordering on the ridiculous but so very evocative. Take this for example,
”The clock in the warden’s drawing-room had just struck eight, and already the ducal feet were beautiful on the white bearskin hearthrug. So slim and long were they, of instep so nobly arched, that only with a pair of glazed ox-tongues on a breakfast-table were they comparable. Incomparable quite, the figure and face and vesture of him who ended in them.�
I mean when have feet ever been described so (except perhaps on specialist interest websites) and the killer is the notion of someone ending in their feet.
And this description of a young man,
”…I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan…�
It’s the layering of the very specific insults that make it so funny.
It is a shame that this is the only book Beerbohm ever wrote as with writing like that I might well have loved a different offering from him.
January 2, 2015
This is a highly-entertaining farce. The humor is anything but subtle.
I may have missed some other wit as well, but even 100 years later and a different culture cannot completely wipe it out. I don't know if this has been made into a movie, though it would have been a huge miss by Hollywood if not. A couple of times I thought of the old Spencer Tracy Kathryn Hepburn movies. Though not exactly the same, the relationship in this between the Duke of Dorset and Zuleika Dobson, made me think of the relationship between those actors in their movies.
The exaggerated prose amplifies the humor.
On another small table stood Zuleika's library. Both books were in covers of dull gold. On the back of one cover BRADSHAW, in beryls, was encrusted; on the back of the other, A.B.C. GUIDE, in amethysts, beryls, chrysoprases, and garnets.I could not miss that her "library" contained all of two books. Not being British, I missed that the two books were railway guides.
I may have missed some other wit as well, but even 100 years later and a different culture cannot completely wipe it out. I don't know if this has been made into a movie, though it would have been a huge miss by Hollywood if not. A couple of times I thought of the old Spencer Tracy Kathryn Hepburn movies. Though not exactly the same, the relationship in this between the Duke of Dorset and Zuleika Dobson, made me think of the relationship between those actors in their movies.
The exaggerated prose amplifies the humor.
At the door of the first-class waiting-room, aloof and venerable, stood the Warden of Judas. An ebon pillar of tradition seemed he, in his garb of old-fashioned cleric. Aloft, between the wide brim of his silk hat and the white extent of his shirt-front, appeared those eyes which hawks, that nose which eagles, had often envied. He supported his years on an ebon stick. He alone was worthy of the background.I'm sorry this is Beerbohm's only novel, as I'm sure many readers of his time were also. But he has collections of short stories which I can look forward to.
June 27, 2015
The best way to read Zuleika Dobson is to suspend disbelief and to put one's brain in parking mode. If this is satire, it is of mean quality.
Zuleika Dobson is supposedly a comic story about a femme fatale. The Duke of Dorset and hundreds of Oxford undergraduates killed themselves for love of Zuleika, a vain and self-serving young lady who thrived on self-display and the swooning admiration of young men.
The tone of this classic was playful and snobbish. The story deliberately poked fun at pretentious social behaviours. In this novel were some of the silliest and most saccharinely nauseating protestations of love! One can keel over from a surfeit of honeyed drool. It was quite entertaining initially and then as Zuleika's narcissism and the undergraduates' herd mentality thickened, all that insanity became old, tedious, exasperating, and exceedingly annoying.
How Zuleika Dobson made it to the list of must-read classics is a mystery. Two grudging stars. It is highly not recommended.
Zuleika Dobson is supposedly a comic story about a femme fatale. The Duke of Dorset and hundreds of Oxford undergraduates killed themselves for love of Zuleika, a vain and self-serving young lady who thrived on self-display and the swooning admiration of young men.
The tone of this classic was playful and snobbish. The story deliberately poked fun at pretentious social behaviours. In this novel were some of the silliest and most saccharinely nauseating protestations of love! One can keel over from a surfeit of honeyed drool. It was quite entertaining initially and then as Zuleika's narcissism and the undergraduates' herd mentality thickened, all that insanity became old, tedious, exasperating, and exceedingly annoying.
How Zuleika Dobson made it to the list of must-read classics is a mystery. Two grudging stars. It is highly not recommended.
Want to read
May 30, 2024The Guardian ranked this is the #40 of the 100 best novels written in English:
July 27, 2014
An absolute gem. I've no idea why it took me so long to read this. A send-up of academe, of classism, of romantic delusions, but with a great fondness for genuine romance, and for academic seductions. The language is ornate, effervescent, erudite, delightful; there are hilarious ghosts; there are sentient statues. I read a library copy, but plan to buy my own, to cheer my afternoons and to press upon friends who've not yet read it.
September 24, 2010
My copy of Zuleika Dobson was given to me by a fellow graduate student on the occasion of our graduation. I haven't read it since then. In 1998 a panel commissioned by the Modern Library called it one of the 100 best novels of the 20th century -- No. 59 to be exact. Whether it's a better novel than The Moviegoer (60), The Catcher in the Rye (64), The House of Mirth (69), or The Adventures of Augie March (81), I can't say.
In truth, I think it misleading to call Zuleika Dobson a novel. It has less in common with the books mentioned above, more or less conventionally realistic novels, than with books like Gulliver's Travels or Lewis Carroll's Alice books -- works of fiction that step out of the confines of conventional narrative realism to pursue other aims, such as satire or whimsy. Zuleika Dobson is both: a whimsical satire. It's also a parody of romantic fiction, an ironic tribute to Oxford University, and a metafictional commentary on the nature of the novel itself.
Unlike the novels above, in fact unlike almost all of the other 99 novels on the list (Finnegans Wake the chief possible other exception), it is not character-driven. Zuleika and the Duke of Dorset don't propel the plot so much as they are propelled through it by the whim of the author -- or, if you wish, the gods who preside over their destinies. It is a cheerfully callous book, though not a cold-hearted one. Beerbohm has some obvious affection for his creations, or he wouldn't spend so much time with them, sorting out their various reactions to each other.
The entire book is premised on an ironic refutation of Rosalind's assertion that "men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Ironic, because the absurdity of the mass suicide of the entire Oxford student body over love for Zuleika is manifest. But Beerbohm's irony gives the romantic fantasy its due. Like Zuleika and her grandfather, Beerbohm is rather tickled by the whole notion -- again not coldly or callously, but out of a kind of amused respect for the foolish nobility of the act.
It's well, however, to note the date of the book: It was published in 1911. Three years later, the young men of England would begin dying heroically and absurdly in places like the Somme. Beerbohm's book would take on the aspect of chilling prophecy, especially in light of the Duke's comparison of the suicidal fervor of his fellow undergraduates to the jingoism that inspired Britons before the Boer War.
The book is also clear-sighted in its treatment of both Oxford nostalgia and ivory-tower detachment from the real world, as in the Junta's meticulous devotion to its rituals and the dons' studious avoidance of the truth about what has happened before the "bump-dinner," despite the undergraduates' absence from the Hall. If there is one passage that sums up Beerbohm's attitude toward the university, it is this:
"Oxford, that lotus-land, saps the will-power, the power of action. But, in doing so, it clarifies the mind, makes larger the vision, gives, above all, that playful and caressing suavity of manner which comes of a conviction that nothing matters, except ideas, and that not even ideas are worth dying for, inasmuch as the ghosts of them slain seem worthy of yet more piously elaborate homage than can be given to them in their heyday."
It still seems strange to me to call Zuleika Dobson a novel, but if it is one, it's a novel of ideas.
In truth, I think it misleading to call Zuleika Dobson a novel. It has less in common with the books mentioned above, more or less conventionally realistic novels, than with books like Gulliver's Travels or Lewis Carroll's Alice books -- works of fiction that step out of the confines of conventional narrative realism to pursue other aims, such as satire or whimsy. Zuleika Dobson is both: a whimsical satire. It's also a parody of romantic fiction, an ironic tribute to Oxford University, and a metafictional commentary on the nature of the novel itself.
Unlike the novels above, in fact unlike almost all of the other 99 novels on the list (Finnegans Wake the chief possible other exception), it is not character-driven. Zuleika and the Duke of Dorset don't propel the plot so much as they are propelled through it by the whim of the author -- or, if you wish, the gods who preside over their destinies. It is a cheerfully callous book, though not a cold-hearted one. Beerbohm has some obvious affection for his creations, or he wouldn't spend so much time with them, sorting out their various reactions to each other.
The entire book is premised on an ironic refutation of Rosalind's assertion that "men have died from time to time and worms have eaten them, but not for love." Ironic, because the absurdity of the mass suicide of the entire Oxford student body over love for Zuleika is manifest. But Beerbohm's irony gives the romantic fantasy its due. Like Zuleika and her grandfather, Beerbohm is rather tickled by the whole notion -- again not coldly or callously, but out of a kind of amused respect for the foolish nobility of the act.
It's well, however, to note the date of the book: It was published in 1911. Three years later, the young men of England would begin dying heroically and absurdly in places like the Somme. Beerbohm's book would take on the aspect of chilling prophecy, especially in light of the Duke's comparison of the suicidal fervor of his fellow undergraduates to the jingoism that inspired Britons before the Boer War.
The book is also clear-sighted in its treatment of both Oxford nostalgia and ivory-tower detachment from the real world, as in the Junta's meticulous devotion to its rituals and the dons' studious avoidance of the truth about what has happened before the "bump-dinner," despite the undergraduates' absence from the Hall. If there is one passage that sums up Beerbohm's attitude toward the university, it is this:
"Oxford, that lotus-land, saps the will-power, the power of action. But, in doing so, it clarifies the mind, makes larger the vision, gives, above all, that playful and caressing suavity of manner which comes of a conviction that nothing matters, except ideas, and that not even ideas are worth dying for, inasmuch as the ghosts of them slain seem worthy of yet more piously elaborate homage than can be given to them in their heyday."
It still seems strange to me to call Zuleika Dobson a novel, but if it is one, it's a novel of ideas.
December 15, 2013
Reading online at .
"Death cancels all engagements," in this morbidly funny satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. When a beautiful magician swears she can love no man susceptible to her charms she sets off a dangerous taste for suicide among the college boys.
Free download available at .
"Death cancels all engagements," in this morbidly funny satire of undergraduate life at Oxford. When a beautiful magician swears she can love no man susceptible to her charms she sets off a dangerous taste for suicide among the college boys.
Free download available at .
Want to read
July 4, 2015My goal in life is to someday look up a book and find out that El hasn't already read it.
Lauren: "I recommend this book to anyone who liked Heathers."
Me: "So should I just whip it out, or..."
Lauren: "I recommend this book to anyone who liked Heathers."
Me: "So should I just whip it out, or..."
July 6, 2019
Having buddy read Max Beerbohm’s only novel Zuleika Dobson I am up staring it to four based on the influence of the more general opinion. Folks liked it more than I did. I liked it but just not as much than was the general opinion. Because this is Beerbohm’s only novel; my guess is that he was not as certain of his mastery of the novel as he was of his other accomplishments. There is a certain droll dark humor to this book that may not make it appropriate for the very young. It is not a stretch to call it family friendly. Beerbohm is generally considered a master of the humorous essay. Think Mark Twain with a Edwardian English accent and with Oscar Wilde as an inspiration. Beerbohm was widely respected as a reviewer and was an accomplished caricaturist. My mistake was in attempting to first know him via this book. It is on one or another of the great book lists, but only just cuts it with me.
In Zuleika Dobson, the author poses a central question. It reads like a living application of the immovable force and the irresistible object problem. As the expression goes, something has got to give.
Without assigning roles we have our central character, Miss Zuleika Dobson. Her virginal, unmarried condition is important. She is the living embodiment of the woman every man loves on sight. That is her only important achievement. She instantly inspires love in all males who see her. She does this on sight. She does work to maintain her image. He physical image is all she has. We get pages about her wardroom (please note that pride of place in her myriad possessions is her ornate mirror) and pages about her would be lovers and the riches they have and would offer her. It is perhaps almost too much to mention that one would be swain offers her a special status as a model maiden, even as he offers her a prime spot in his seraglio. Parenthetically one of the better jokes in the books. Beerbohm’s version is funnier because his word choice makes it so.
Against her magic, student and multi-talented, much petted Duke of Dorset is of course powerless. He gets pages and pages and pages about all his claims to nobility and riches and castles and traditions and ghosts and owls, (take that Harry Potter) but against this woman that all love on sight he loses his detachment and is smitten. Smitten to the point of pledging that he must have her love or die. And therein lies the rub.
The one woman who is on sight beloved by all males is sick of the offers and longs for the man who is indifferent to her unearned or asked for power. Zuleika cannot return the Duke’s love.
The Duke cannot have her love, because he has asked for it. Is he sufficiently noble, or sufficiently an English gentleman, and therefore a man absolutely of his word - to die by the terms of his pledge?
The rest of the book is a combination of filler and set pieces to build the dramatic tension and further exaggerate the comedic complications. At this I must make a few observations.
Zuleika Dobson is subtitled an Oxford Fantasy. It is a fantasy that takes place in Oxford. How much it is a satire of life at Oxford is a matter of some debate. We see nothing of the school as a school. We meet no professors actively professing and no one is ever at class. There is one mention of having attended a lecture but only in passing. There is a wonderful small-scale satire of a most severely snobbish student dinning club. There is mention of several buildings, by correct names, and the busts of the Emperors (actual features to be found at Oxford) atop some fencing get roles as something of a Greek Chorus.
Ultimately the setting is Oxford because of a need for a concentration of young men of an age to be dating. They could have just as easily been the village swains or the young men of a large country club. Had the Edwardians such a thing.
Max Beerbohm was certainly a man with more than some writing skills. There is some fun to be had with the story. I was frequently smiling very rarely laughing. Others took to it better and found satire where I only found vague humor. Some felt it is a fine comedy of manners. The only manner of any more than passing mention is the core problem, the woman who inspires love and the pledge of death absent a return of the inspired love. It is mostly situational comedy but with a writer of finer sensitivities. At 200 pages, it is a literate, and slight summer read.
In Zuleika Dobson, the author poses a central question. It reads like a living application of the immovable force and the irresistible object problem. As the expression goes, something has got to give.
Without assigning roles we have our central character, Miss Zuleika Dobson. Her virginal, unmarried condition is important. She is the living embodiment of the woman every man loves on sight. That is her only important achievement. She instantly inspires love in all males who see her. She does this on sight. She does work to maintain her image. He physical image is all she has. We get pages about her wardroom (please note that pride of place in her myriad possessions is her ornate mirror) and pages about her would be lovers and the riches they have and would offer her. It is perhaps almost too much to mention that one would be swain offers her a special status as a model maiden, even as he offers her a prime spot in his seraglio. Parenthetically one of the better jokes in the books. Beerbohm’s version is funnier because his word choice makes it so.
Against her magic, student and multi-talented, much petted Duke of Dorset is of course powerless. He gets pages and pages and pages about all his claims to nobility and riches and castles and traditions and ghosts and owls, (take that Harry Potter) but against this woman that all love on sight he loses his detachment and is smitten. Smitten to the point of pledging that he must have her love or die. And therein lies the rub.
The one woman who is on sight beloved by all males is sick of the offers and longs for the man who is indifferent to her unearned or asked for power. Zuleika cannot return the Duke’s love.
The Duke cannot have her love, because he has asked for it. Is he sufficiently noble, or sufficiently an English gentleman, and therefore a man absolutely of his word - to die by the terms of his pledge?
The rest of the book is a combination of filler and set pieces to build the dramatic tension and further exaggerate the comedic complications. At this I must make a few observations.
Zuleika Dobson is subtitled an Oxford Fantasy. It is a fantasy that takes place in Oxford. How much it is a satire of life at Oxford is a matter of some debate. We see nothing of the school as a school. We meet no professors actively professing and no one is ever at class. There is one mention of having attended a lecture but only in passing. There is a wonderful small-scale satire of a most severely snobbish student dinning club. There is mention of several buildings, by correct names, and the busts of the Emperors (actual features to be found at Oxford) atop some fencing get roles as something of a Greek Chorus.
Ultimately the setting is Oxford because of a need for a concentration of young men of an age to be dating. They could have just as easily been the village swains or the young men of a large country club. Had the Edwardians such a thing.
Max Beerbohm was certainly a man with more than some writing skills. There is some fun to be had with the story. I was frequently smiling very rarely laughing. Others took to it better and found satire where I only found vague humor. Some felt it is a fine comedy of manners. The only manner of any more than passing mention is the core problem, the woman who inspires love and the pledge of death absent a return of the inspired love. It is mostly situational comedy but with a writer of finer sensitivities. At 200 pages, it is a literate, and slight summer read.
December 12, 2015
Beerbohm's is a humorous satire, more in the vein of Oscar Wilde than Jonathan Swift. As the book proceeds from one ludicrous scenario to another, I felt less involved with the characters than with the pitiful realities that they are meant to deride. Beerbohm jabs at everything he touches, particularly the dandy and Oxford institutions, but he does it with a light and almost affectionate style.
I fail to see how anyone could find the character of Zuleika charming, but I am told that I if I do not admit her to be so I am wholly unable to understand the imports of satire. I find that, in itself, a bit ironic, since one does not create such characters as Zuleika unless one holds her living model in disdain. Does one satirize people and institutions that one finds charming and pure?
Not being able to find a single admirable character in the book does not prevent the marvelous enjoyment of it, however. I was able to find the equivalent of almost each of these people in modern society: the girl who is famous for being famous (think Paris Hilton) and who stirs extreme devotion in her peers without any salient cause evident; the imperious dandy who is, in his own mind, superlative to everyone around him; the lemming-like followers (were we not all cautioned by our mothers not to "jump off a cliff just because others are doing it?"); the clueless dons who are supposed to be leading the young and are in fact totally oblivious to what is going on in their minds or lives; and the man who allows social conventions and outside opinions to determine what he will or will not do with his life.
While the reading is slow in some parts, the book overall has a pleasing flow that carries you along like a river to its disturbing (albeit humorous) end. That Zuleika has profited nothing from her experience is not surprising...that Cambridge may be in danger undoubtable.
I fail to see how anyone could find the character of Zuleika charming, but I am told that I if I do not admit her to be so I am wholly unable to understand the imports of satire. I find that, in itself, a bit ironic, since one does not create such characters as Zuleika unless one holds her living model in disdain. Does one satirize people and institutions that one finds charming and pure?
Not being able to find a single admirable character in the book does not prevent the marvelous enjoyment of it, however. I was able to find the equivalent of almost each of these people in modern society: the girl who is famous for being famous (think Paris Hilton) and who stirs extreme devotion in her peers without any salient cause evident; the imperious dandy who is, in his own mind, superlative to everyone around him; the lemming-like followers (were we not all cautioned by our mothers not to "jump off a cliff just because others are doing it?"); the clueless dons who are supposed to be leading the young and are in fact totally oblivious to what is going on in their minds or lives; and the man who allows social conventions and outside opinions to determine what he will or will not do with his life.
While the reading is slow in some parts, the book overall has a pleasing flow that carries you along like a river to its disturbing (albeit humorous) end. That Zuleika has profited nothing from her experience is not surprising...that Cambridge may be in danger undoubtable.
March 29, 2011
This is an oddity. It was Beerbohm's only novel and is a satire of university life at Oxford in the very early twentieth century. There is no need to worry about spoilers, the book does that for you very near the beginning. Most of the characters are as shallow as puddles. There are bursts of magic realism occasional ghosts, Greek gods and lots of style with no depth.
The story is about a young woman who is very beautiful; she has a successful conjuring act (although she is not very good at it). She visits her grandfather who is warden of an Oxford college. All the undergraduates fall in love with her, except one. She obviously falls in love with him. When he returns her love she quite obviously falls out of love with him. He despairs and declares he will dies for her. Eventually the whole undergraduate population (all male of course) commit mass suicide in the river after the rowing. The Oxford colleges don't notice they are missing and carry on. Zuleika heads off to Cambridge at the end of the book.
Completely mad and very funny in parts with lots of classical references; wonderfully satirical account of romantic love. This is a particular type of humour and is an acquired taste, I can understand why some people might hate it or find it boring.
The story is about a young woman who is very beautiful; she has a successful conjuring act (although she is not very good at it). She visits her grandfather who is warden of an Oxford college. All the undergraduates fall in love with her, except one. She obviously falls in love with him. When he returns her love she quite obviously falls out of love with him. He despairs and declares he will dies for her. Eventually the whole undergraduate population (all male of course) commit mass suicide in the river after the rowing. The Oxford colleges don't notice they are missing and carry on. Zuleika heads off to Cambridge at the end of the book.
Completely mad and very funny in parts with lots of classical references; wonderfully satirical account of romantic love. This is a particular type of humour and is an acquired taste, I can understand why some people might hate it or find it boring.
January 1, 2014
This is satire. It has to be. I just thought it sounded like an interesting story and I needed a book title that started with Z for a challenge I was participating in. I had come across the author’s name and mention of the book title in an editorial I had read somewhere and added it to my TBR list. I had even looked at a portion of the copy (I realized it later, when I got to that place in the story.)
The author claims, in 1946, that it was not written as a satire. He said he had written it as a fantasy. Okay, but it is more. I thought it was going to be a love story at the beginning. It is and more. A beautiful girl and a Duke scholar meet. The conversations between the two are not to be missed! What happens is not to be believed. I still can’t get over it.
There is so much going on in this book. Keep in mind that it was first published in 1911. The language is not hard to read, but there are lots of old style words (that I had to look up). Great words! There is a kind of history lesson going on about Oxford and University life and bits about the Greek Gods. I found it all fascinating.
The author claims, in 1946, that it was not written as a satire. He said he had written it as a fantasy. Okay, but it is more. I thought it was going to be a love story at the beginning. It is and more. A beautiful girl and a Duke scholar meet. The conversations between the two are not to be missed! What happens is not to be believed. I still can’t get over it.
There is so much going on in this book. Keep in mind that it was first published in 1911. The language is not hard to read, but there are lots of old style words (that I had to look up). Great words! There is a kind of history lesson going on about Oxford and University life and bits about the Greek Gods. I found it all fascinating.
March 24, 2014
Max Beerbohm, equal parts gifted artist and writer delivered a time capsule of Oxford circa 1910. The characters are drawn deeply, defined by their timeless traits such as vanity, insouciance, youth and passion.
Beerbohm's writing is strikingly modern, he occasionally breaks the third wall and speaks directly to the reader. His humor is often laugh out loud funny and endearing without ever being schmaltzy. There is nothing stiff about this British book, many characters suffer from a certain rigidity of the neck but the narrator is hip, modern and funny in a way that makes me see him as his time's David Foster Wallace. There is a parallel there to Infinite Jest as odd and oddly funny goings on at a boarding school are dealt with in the voice of someone who has clearly, without a doubt, been there.
Beerbohm's writing is strikingly modern, he occasionally breaks the third wall and speaks directly to the reader. His humor is often laugh out loud funny and endearing without ever being schmaltzy. There is nothing stiff about this British book, many characters suffer from a certain rigidity of the neck but the narrator is hip, modern and funny in a way that makes me see him as his time's David Foster Wallace. There is a parallel there to Infinite Jest as odd and oddly funny goings on at a boarding school are dealt with in the voice of someone who has clearly, without a doubt, been there.
November 30, 2016
I am giving Zuleika Dobson four stars as it proved a suitable distraction from the ongoing Brexit fiasco. It reminded me of a black-dyed meringue - sweet, light, fluffy, and very dark. The story is essentially all about death, suicide in fact, while also being a light-hearted magical realist Oxford farce. An interesting and ununusual combination. Although I read the illustrated edition, I must say the pictures didn't do much for me. They were charming enough, but chopped up the text is a rather provoking fashion. I was much more fond of the words, especially grandiose words like peripety, aseity, and orgulous, none of which I'd come across before. Beerbohm has a knack for turn of phrase, rather like a less sunny Wodehouse:
The main character is ostensibly the titular Zuleika, a mysterious and bewitching woman who has the whole student body of Oxford killing themselves out of love for her. Another aside from the narrator, of which he allows himself many, comments acerbically on this phenomenon:
The treatment of Zuleika is intriguingly ambivalent. She shows a remarkable lack of remorse for the carnage she apparently caused, yet the students themselves are clearly acting very foolishly and the college fellows seem wilfully ignorant of what's happening. Given the book's original date of publication, 1911, I was tempted to read into it a macabre and prescient satire on patriotic fervour at the start of the First World War. Oxford undergraduates of three years later would after all be effectively committing suicide by trench warfare. Zuleika is perhaps a spectre representative of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. The author cannot have known that a world war would occur, of course, so this is all very retrospective. In any event, 'Zuleika Dobson' is an enjoyably weird novel, in which the best-developed character is the omniscient narrator and supernatural happenings go largely unremarked. Moreover, Zuleika really is a wonderful name for a literal femme fatale. As a dark mockery of Oxford, the aristocracy, and male pomposity in general, the book can be very funny. I did love this sort of dialogue:
It should be noted while reading the above that the Duke is also an undergraduate!
Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic. The lilac and laburnum, making lovely now the railed pathway to Christ Church meadow, were all a-swaying and a-nodding to the Duke as he passed by. "Adieu, adieu, your Grace," they were whispering. "We are very sorry for you - very sorry indeed. We never dared suppose you would predecease us. We think your death a very great tragedy. Adieu! Perhaps we shall meet in another world - that is, if members of the animal kingdom have immortal souls, as we have."
The main character is ostensibly the titular Zuleika, a mysterious and bewitching woman who has the whole student body of Oxford killing themselves out of love for her. Another aside from the narrator, of which he allows himself many, comments acerbically on this phenomenon:
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows and he is lost - he becomes just a unit in unreason. If any one of the undergraduates had met Miss Dobson in the desert of Sahara, he would have fallen in love with her; but not one in a thousand would have wished to die because she did not love him.
The treatment of Zuleika is intriguingly ambivalent. She shows a remarkable lack of remorse for the carnage she apparently caused, yet the students themselves are clearly acting very foolishly and the college fellows seem wilfully ignorant of what's happening. Given the book's original date of publication, 1911, I was tempted to read into it a macabre and prescient satire on patriotic fervour at the start of the First World War. Oxford undergraduates of three years later would after all be effectively committing suicide by trench warfare. Zuleika is perhaps a spectre representative of 'dulce et decorum est pro patria mori'. The author cannot have known that a world war would occur, of course, so this is all very retrospective. In any event, 'Zuleika Dobson' is an enjoyably weird novel, in which the best-developed character is the omniscient narrator and supernatural happenings go largely unremarked. Moreover, Zuleika really is a wonderful name for a literal femme fatale. As a dark mockery of Oxford, the aristocracy, and male pomposity in general, the book can be very funny. I did love this sort of dialogue:
Down the flight of steps from Queen's came lounging an average undergraduate.
"Mr. Smith," said the Duke, "a word with you."
"But my name is not Smith," said the young man.
"Generically it is," replied the Duke. "You are Smith to all intents and purposes. That, indeed, is why I address you. In making your acquaitance, I make a thousand acquaintances. You are a short cut to knowledge. Tell me, do you seriously think of drowning yourself this afternoon?"
"Rather," said the undergraduate.
"A meiosis in common use, equivalent to 'Yes, assuredly,'" murmured the Duke, "And why," he then asked, "do you mean to do this?"
"Why? How can you ask? Why are you going to do it?"
"The Socratic manner is not a game that two can play. Please answer my question to the best of your ability."
It should be noted while reading the above that the Duke is also an undergraduate!
February 3, 2017
How is it possible to regard a work about the mass suicide of Oxford undergraduates -- all for unrequited love of a decorous young woman -- as a comedy? Yet has done it with .
Miss Zuleika Dobson, the granddaughter of the Warden of Judas College at Oxford [sic], turns the heads of all the young males at Oxford, most particularly that of the young Duke of Dorset, the leader of his college. Zuleika is one of those females who cannot approve of any male who is in love with her, and it seems that all of them are. If she thinks they are not in love with her -- an occurrence that never really occurs except by mistake -- she falls in love with them, or thinks she does.
For a good half of the novel, we know that the Duke plans to jump into the river, and that most of the undergraduates are of his mind. How is it possible that Beerborhm can hold our attention?
The answer is by his witty style, of a sort that has never been used before for such an unpromising plot. Here Zuleika reviles Noaks, the one surviving undergraduate, who she had thought did not love her and therefore that she loved him:
Never before has such a jape been carried so far. But I kept reading because of my encounter with a real life in the flesh Zuleika. Fortunately, I did not drown myself for unrequited love -- but I spent almost ten years courting her. (Better I would have drowned myself than married her!)
Miss Zuleika Dobson, the granddaughter of the Warden of Judas College at Oxford [sic], turns the heads of all the young males at Oxford, most particularly that of the young Duke of Dorset, the leader of his college. Zuleika is one of those females who cannot approve of any male who is in love with her, and it seems that all of them are. If she thinks they are not in love with her -- an occurrence that never really occurs except by mistake -- she falls in love with them, or thinks she does.
For a good half of the novel, we know that the Duke plans to jump into the river, and that most of the undergraduates are of his mind. How is it possible that Beerborhm can hold our attention?
The answer is by his witty style, of a sort that has never been used before for such an unpromising plot. Here Zuleika reviles Noaks, the one surviving undergraduate, who she had thought did not love her and therefore that she loved him:
As for you, Sir Lily Liver, leaning out there, and, I frankly tell you, looking like nothing so much as a gargoyle hewn by a drunken stone-mason for the adornment of a Methodist Chapel in one of the vilest suburbs of Leeds or Wigan, I do but felicitate the river-god and his nymphs that their water was saved to-day by your cowardice from the contamination of your plunge.And this is only the first part of Lord Dorset's introduction of himself to the same Zuleika Dobson:
Love, however, is greater than pride; and I, John, Albert, Edward, Clause, Orde, Angus, Tankerton [pronounced as Tacton], Tanville-Tankerton [pronounced as Tavvle-Tacton], fourteenth Duke of Dorset, Marquis of Dorset, Earl of Grove, Earl of Chastermaine, Viscount Brewsby, Baron Grove, Baron Petstrap, and Baron Wolock, in the Peerage of England, offer you my hand.He sounds as if he takes up half the index of Debrett's Peerage, if it has an index.
Never before has such a jape been carried so far. But I kept reading because of my encounter with a real life in the flesh Zuleika. Fortunately, I did not drown myself for unrequited love -- but I spent almost ten years courting her. (Better I would have drowned myself than married her!)
January 12, 2016
At last, a book that was supposed to be funny and actually is. It's the first of this summer, I think, to hold up to its promise.
Highlights for me included the Duke, alone in his club, president and sole member, proposing students for membership, seconding them himself and then taking a vote in which he turns them down. And, of course, the narrator's constant interruptions to explain his special relationship with his second-tier muse. And the dead floating around behaving just as badly as the living.
And this, just at the end:
'Well, I am sorry you are going away, my dear. But perhaps, in the circumstances, it is best. You must come and stay hereagain, later on,' he said, handing her the lit candle. 'Not in term time, though,' he added.
'No,' she echoed, 'not in term time.'
Highlights for me included the Duke, alone in his club, president and sole member, proposing students for membership, seconding them himself and then taking a vote in which he turns them down. And, of course, the narrator's constant interruptions to explain his special relationship with his second-tier muse. And the dead floating around behaving just as badly as the living.
And this, just at the end:
'Well, I am sorry you are going away, my dear. But perhaps, in the circumstances, it is best. You must come and stay hereagain, later on,' he said, handing her the lit candle. 'Not in term time, though,' he added.
'No,' she echoed, 'not in term time.'
July 24, 2016
Beerbohm's only novel is a satire of university life at Oxford in the very early twentieth century. I was impressed by the vividly characters and the depth of the satire. It's not easy to find good satire books for the lack of demand because satire is not as popular a genre as many others.
A young beautiful woman visits her grandfather who is warden of an Oxford college. Everyone at the college falls in love with her, except one whom she falls in love with. The book is a very different kind of humor that appealed to me a lot. I am not sure if this will appeal universally! Great book!
A young beautiful woman visits her grandfather who is warden of an Oxford college. Everyone at the college falls in love with her, except one whom she falls in love with. The book is a very different kind of humor that appealed to me a lot. I am not sure if this will appeal universally! Great book!
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