I don't really like reading, which must strain credulity, since I devote so much of my time and energy to doing it. But reading, for me, is never an eI don't really like reading, which must strain credulity, since I devote so much of my time and energy to doing it. But reading, for me, is never an easy thing. Only rarely do I get caught up and find myself turning pages heedlessly, plunging into the text. More often, I am well aware of what page I'm on and how many pages until this chapter ends.
The reading itself is slow and ponderous, winding a sinuous path through the book, and this leisurely pace always sets my mind to wandering, looking for clues and foreshadowing, word use, structure, ideas, half-ideas, and flashes of brilliance. All of my friends read more quickly than I do, and many have described their experience as being totally divorced from the text: that once they get into the book, they grow unaware of the process of reading.
And yet I am the one who writes the reviews, whose mind whirls and reels with layered meanings and critical analysis. So I keep reading, though it is can be a chore, as my brain must always perk up and churn along, processing and considering.
Many a time, I've wished I had my friends' eyes, and could knock out a book in an afternoon, could simply read as if I were watching TV--then I could afford the luxury of rereading. I can read more quickly than is my habit: in college, I often forced myself to do so, to make due dates. Yet it was always unpleasant, rushing through without a moment free for thought, so that by the time I came out, I had only half the ideas and observations I would normally glean from a good book.
I was tempted to rush with The Last Man, not because it was dull or poorly written--which often tempts me to rush through worse books, knowing I won't miss much--but because it is thick and long, and may be even more ponderous than I am. This book was a haul, moreso than any other in my recent memory, it took time and energy to get through the long chapters, poetic language, and asides.
Yet it was not poorly-written, the poetry of its language was not misplaced, nor was its pacing some accident of language; it's a good book. It was merely a great deal of book to get through.
Like many Victorian authors, Shelley felt no need to rush the plot along, nor to curtail her flood of words. Luckily, she backed them up with ideas and feelings, so it was not merely the empty deluge of words so common in many American novels of the same period.
There were some problems with the book's structure, most notably that Shelley often passed over moments of action or character growth with a short summary, but almost never curtailed her descriptions of places or emotional states. But this gives the book a very introspective bent, which complements the protagonist's isolation as he attempts to come to terms with the world as it collapses around him.
The book is thematically intriguing, especially to someone who has an interest and a familiarity with the ideals, philosophies, and art of the Victorian period. Much of the book is a deconstruction of Romanticism, showing how an aesthete's optimism never long survives contact with the real world. This wasn't a problem for Shelley's compatriots, as they had the money and influence to avoid the more difficult aspects of reality, but after they all died young, only Mary was left, a lone woman in a changing world, writing a book about the death of the grand Romantic ideal.
The 'Last Man' from which she takes her title was not an original idea of Shelley's, either, but a Victorian notion that had been explored by many previous authors. It was Shelley's intention to create a whole story around the concept, presenting the fall of that last man with the image of the death of the Victorian ideal itself in the face of overwhelming democratic industrialization of ever aspect of modern life, including art.
For Shelley, man was not a uniform mass: there were remarkable men, and there were unremarkable men. This distinction has been widely condemned in modern democratic states, where Payne's notion that men should be treated equally was mistaken for the idea that men actually are equal. But Mary cuts us to the quick, reminding us that great men (and particularly great artists) can do little to stem the tide of the mob, or of industry.
It is a strikingly postmodern message, prefiguring Nietzsche and the American postwar authors. It is a message that Shelley's refined peers were not prepared to hear, so they attacked the book, and the author herself, calling her 'perverse' and 'ugly'. She presented a perverse and ugly world, a naturalistic world, which she had come to know through hardship, and which her peers failed to see looming on the horizon.
For them, Keats' ultimate line "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" held few notes of irony, but for Shelley, they were already the words of a dead compatriot, whose beautiful ideas served mainly to ennoble his tragedy.
Shelley's book was reviled, and her career stagnated--despite all the promise of 'Frankenstein', 'The Last Man' would fall out of print for more than a century, and its prescient foreshadowing our modern obsessions with death, isolation, and other such eschatonic concerns went long unnoticed. Now, the story she told seems familiar and reasonable, and even somewhat idealistic in the throes of slow degradation, though it stands up beside the works of Eliot and Beckett as an unrelenting vision of doom.
What Shelley came to recognize, which none of her critics mentioned, was that the death of mankind is not merely marked by our spilled blood and lifeless bodies, but by the fall of art, of idealism, of love and joy, and all the heights that we have reached, or hoped to reach. The death of man is a tragedy only inasmuch as it cuts off our possibility, our future, our promise; though if we lived forever, we still might never reach it, there remains always, hope....more
And so it was that the plague came into London, by the mercy of God, and I thought I would remain in the city despite the plague, for since God made iAnd so it was that the plague came into London, by the mercy of God, and I thought I would remain in the city despite the plague, for since God made it, I could not escape it if he meant me to perish from it, viz. when that brick fell off the chimney and onto my foot, which I was loathe to move, for since God sent the brick, it would do me no good to move my foot and so avoid his will.
But I would say the best way to avoid the plague and to survive would be to leave the city, as many did, when the signs of the plague came, for in this way, many survived who would not have, by the grace of God, for though God created the plague, which cannot be hoped to be avoided, we are no Mahometans who believe our lives predetermined.
But, the Lord Mayor should not have locked people with the plague up in their houses, for this was a cruel thing, and I think many died who had no reason to from this expedient, viz. by being trapped with others who were diseased or suffering ill health from the close air.
I rejoice that God sent this plague to kill so many unpleasant people, viz. heathens and unbelievers and thieves and the greedy, for surely God sent the plague for this purpose, and would not have allowed to live any who so deserved death, viz heathens, unbelievers, thieves, and the greedy.
Though it was difficult to go to church, for so many of the priests had died, and so many of those who came in and prayed for their lives, and their families lives, which was the best thing they could do, even though the plague travels on the breath and to be in church is very dangerous for this reason, doubtless God spared the good people who deserved life, viz. kind and gentle people.
Now I must tell you a sad story about a man who I knew to be extremely generous and pious, and whose wife was chaste and always kind, and who had two infant children. The children both died of the plague, followed by the wife, who did not even know she had it, and then he was driven to madness by the plague and ran through the streets naked and babbling, before he also died. I feel it was necessary to relate this story, for there are many such like it, and though I cannot declare it's veracity myself, it seems so likely that I must needs include it here, viz. it is a worthy story.
And I should say that the Lord Mayor should not have locked people with the plague up in their houses, for this was a cruel thing, and I think many died who had no reason to from this expedient, viz. by being trapped with others who were diseased or suffering ill health from the close air.
There are some physicians who say that the disease can be detected by taking a microscope to the exhalation of a victim, whereupon will be seen many tiny monsters, viz. dragons, snakes, and devils, and that these enter the blood and lay many eggs which pass the disease along, but I think this most ridiculous and unlikely, and only include it because some have said it.
Some poor, ignorant folks went to fortune tellers or other such liars and payed monies to have certain rituals performed or symbols given which were meant to protect them, viz. pins or necklaces said to be good luck or proof against disease, which was most foolish and it is a shame that such folk took advantage of the poor in this way.
Luckily, most of the poor took faith in the church, wearing crosses or invoking saints and praying each day and night to be spared, which I am certain the greater part were.
But I should not end this account without first speaking of a certain crime: the Lord Mayor should not have locked people with the plague up in their houses, for this was a cruel thing, and I think many died who had no reason to from this expedient, viz. by being trapped with others who were diseased or suffering ill health from the close air....more
J.G. Keely
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