Happenings in the village

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Thanks to constant distractions and distractibility (two different things, I assure you), I have been reading Middlemarch for weeks. But unlike other times when it has taken me a long time to finish a book, I’m not in any hurry to get to the end. I’m completely absorbed in the goings on in Middlemarch and Lowick Manor and environs. Mr. Casaubon is dead, good riddance, and I have no idea what Dorothea will do now in her wealthy widowhood. Dr. Lydgate is up to his neck in debt, while his beautiful and spoiled wife Rosamond keeps spending money. Mary and Fred, who have always loved each other, have finally acknowledged this fact to one another, but this is no guarantee that things will turn out happily for them. And Mr. Brooke is standing for Parliament, but he’s not very good on the hustings, and I don’t like his chances. 

*****

My gosh, Rosamond. Mind your own business, girl. Handle your own problems - you have about 99 of them right now, and the codicil on the vile Mr. Casaubon’s will is not one.  

*****

OK, enough of what’s happening in Middlemarch. Let’s discuss what’s happening in Silver Spring. It’s Saturday morning, bright and sunny but cold. The cold isn’t bothering me, though, because I can see the light at the end of the proverbial winter tunnel. I actually mean this literally. I worked until almost 5 yesterday and thanks to a 5:52 sunset time, I still had plenty of time to go for a walk. It’s still going to be cold for a while (until after Memorial Day if the last few years are any predictor) but at least it’s not dark at 4:45 anymore. 

That’s the good news. The bad news is that I lost at Wordle today, just a day short of tying my all-time consecutive win streak of 103. My win percentage remains at 99% but now I have to start over on the consecutive game streak. Today is day 1. I’ll get it this time. 

*****

I have no idea how things are going to shake out for the widowed Dorothea Brooke Casaubon and her late husband’s distant cousin Will Ladislaw. If I were to make a prediction, I’d guess that Mary Garth and Fred Vincy are heading toward a happy ending, but Dorothea and Will will go their separate ways, each of them never knowing for sure if the other feels the same way about them. They are both highly principled - rigidly so - and brilliant but impetuous people who seem brave and fearless in most situations, but neither of them can bring themselves to declare their feelings until they’re sure that the other person feels the same. Someone has to say something first. Someone has to take the risk. I hope that one of them will speak up before it’s too late but I’m not optimistic. I think there’s only going to be one really happy love story at the end of this thing. 

*****

It’s Tuesday afternoon now, and I’m just finishing work for the day. I had planned on a walk but it’s gloomy and damp right now, and it’s going to rain any minute. That’s all true of course but what’s also true is that I’d rather read than walk right now. Middlemarch awaits, and now I’m really slowing it down. According to my Kindle “location in book” indicator, I’m about 85 percent finished and I’m already sad about having to leave it behind. I do have some other excellent reading lined up (including two books that I just bought right this minute because writing this paragraph reminded me that I wanted those books - this post just cost me $25) but no matter how good they might be, they won’t be as good as Middlemarch. 

*****

It was Zadie Smith who inspired me to read Middlemarch but it was Martin Amis who said that it was the best English language novel ever published. George Eliot was very obviously influenced by Jane Austen - her sharp but kind, witty but profound observations of human flaws and failings (and virtues and brilliance) were very Austen-like. But Middlemarch is modern in a way that no Austen novel really is. Her imagined world of competitive materialism, politics and punditry, careerism and ambition was very much of the 20th century (George Eliot died in 1880) and her analysis of the complex inner lives of her characters, especially the women but the men too, was way ahead of Freud and Jung and the rest of the early modern psychologists. George Eliot saw the future. 

LIke most 19th century novels, Middlemarch proceeds at its own pace and that pace is slow. But that doesn’t mean that things don’t happen. Even when I read just a page or two, something is going on on that page that is indispensable to the story, even if the thing that’s going on is happening exclusively inside a character’s head. Especially then, really. No words are wasted. Nothing is extraneous. And I know that I’m missing or forgetting details from the early chapters, but that just means that I’ll discover new things the next time. I can see myself re-reading Middlemarch, a little bit at a time and over and over again, for the rest of my reading life. Martin Amis was right. It’s just that good.