{"id":7580,"date":"2017-11-06T12:19:37","date_gmt":"2017-11-06T12:19:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7580"},"modified":"2017-11-13T12:38:04","modified_gmt":"2017-11-13T12:38:04","slug":"the-uncommon-reader-by-helen-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/?p=7580","title":{"rendered":"The Uncommon Reader by Helen Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>A Life of Edward Garnett
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Published by Jonathan Cape UK\/ Farrar, Straus & Giroux US<\/strong><\/p>\n

2 November\/ 12 December 2017 <\/strong><\/p>\n

448pp, hardback, \u00a330\/ $35
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/strong><\/p>\n

Click here to buy this book<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Edward Garnett, husband of Constance Garnett, who famously\u00a0 translated the great Russians into English, was for half a century an enormously influential figure in the English-speaking literary world.\u00a0 Editor, critic and, above all, publisher\u2019s reader, he encouraged some of the leading authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries at early stages in their careers.\u00a0 Ford Madox Ford, Joseph Conrad, H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James and Edward Thomas are just some of the most illustrious.\u00a0 Reading anywhere between 300 and 700 manuscripts a year, Garnett worked in turn for many of London\u2019s finest publishing companies, including Heinemann, Duckworth, The Bodley Head and Jonathan Cape.\u00a0 There is scarcely anyone from Stephen Crane to Samuel Beckett whose writing life he did not touch.<\/p>\n

It is curious, then, to find that this long, detailed biography, the fruit of ten years\u2019 research into the documentary archive of this literary world, lacks excitement.\u00a0 If I were not a critic and publisher\u2019s reader myself, would I have kept turning the pages, I asked myself.\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Author Helen Smith gives an interesting insight (from his friend and lover, Nellie) into the downside for an editor\/critic of the critical faculty so valuable to others:\u00a0 that one\u2019s own creative activity becomes inhibited, as it is \u2018exhausted in the service of others\u2019. \u00a0At its best, Smith\u2019s account of Garnett\u2019s life shows what drove him to work unceasingly not just with writers but fiercely on <\/em>them: to make them do what he thought they were best at, regardless of the obstacles, and regardless of what the reading public may have thought it wanted.\u00a0 \u2018The modern Englishman\u2026does not want to be unsettled,\u2019 he said, disparagingly, as he leapt enthusiastically and for life at signs of truth and originality.\u00a0 There is a very funny moment when he nails literary agents and their \u2018magnificent air of favour\u2019 when submitting tired material for the umpteenth time.<\/p>\n

Garnett must have been quite a difficult man to live with.\u00a0 Neurasthenic, if not actually hypochondriac, he was happiest when surrounded by manuscripts and writers.\u00a0 The story goes that, at his regular lunches at the Mont Blanc restaurant, he would be reading the former while talking to the latter, and eating at the same time.\u00a0 One can understand this.\u00a0 He was living at a fascinating time, the transition between two centuries, when a reader\u2019s choice could be between Galsworthy and Joyce, E.M. Forster and Henry Green, Stephen Crane and Jean Rhys.\u00a0 Who wouldn\u2019t have wanted to be reading such writers at the start of their careers?\u00a0 It was a passion, but also an obsession.<\/p>\n

So, perhaps, the fact of the matter is that Garnett\u2019s own life was always going to be less interesting than the books he worked on.\u00a0 Helen Smith does her best with the material available, but leaves the impression often of tremendous detail about what is not tremendously significant.\u00a0 A shorter, sharper account might have made for a more engaging read.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Alison Burns<\/p>\n

Garnett must have been quite a difficult man to live with. Neurasthenic, if not actually hypochondriac, he was happiest when surrounded by manuscripts and writers. The story goes that, at his regular lunches at the Mont Blanc restaurant, he would be reading the former while talking to the latter, and eating at the same time. One can understand this. He was living at a fascinating time, the transition between two centuries, when a reader\u2019s choice could be between Galsworthy and Joyce, E.M. Forster and Henry Green, Stephen Crane and Jean Rhys<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7580","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-fiction-and-non-fiction","category-reviews","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7580"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7640,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7580\/revisions\/7640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7580"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7580"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bookoxygen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7580"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}