Born in Exile George Gissing 9781514870952 Books
Download As PDF : Born in Exile George Gissing 9781514870952 Books
The summer day in 1874 which closed the annual session of Whitelaw College was marked by a special ceremony, preceding the wonted distribution of academic rewards. At eleven in the morning (just as a heavy shower fell from the smoke-canopy above the roaring streets) the municipal authorities, educational dignitaries, and prominent burgesses of Kingsmill assembled on an open space before the College to unveil a statue of Sir Job Whitelaw.
Born in Exile George Gissing 9781514870952 Books
Reading hard and dressing poorly. It is difficult for a poor man to be a freethinker. High self-esteem combined with low self-assertion is Godwin Peak's problem. He sees himself as `born in exile' among poor people, while by rights he should be an upper class intellectual. He is a born aristocrat in his youthful romantic imagination. Eventually he will identify the clergy as his most promising career avenue.His father was a man of `ungainly integrity', who managed to bankrupt himself and die in relatively young age, leaving a struggling wife with 3 kids. The eldest son inherited from him intellectual curiosity and talent. He goes to school and gets a college scholarship. He passes well while always on the brink of starving. His social skills are non-existent, which condemns him to solitude and isolation.
Then he manages to rise somewhat in life, but not quite to the level of his dreams. He begins to shed his strong principles and thinks about becoming a parson, for the safety of the income. He becomes an outright cynic. What does it matter that he is actually an atheist, as long as he can fool the system and make a career in the church?
`There is no right life in the wrong one' was Theodor Adorno's most famous sentence in his Minima Moralia. That remains a debatable point.
This book appeared first under the title Godwin Peak, after its hero. It was published in 1892, right after New Grub Street, Gissing's better known (but not better) novel about writing and publishing. This is a true novel of ideas. It is mainly about the deprivations suffered by a man who finds himself in the `wrong' station in life. That theme allows plentiful observation on the English caste system in the late Victorian age.
A second main subject is the conflict between `established truth' and heretical thinking, here mainly based on early Darwinism and its rejections. One of the respectable protagonists, treated with much sympathy, is an older gentleman, who `believed because he believed, and avoided the impact of disagreeable arguments because he wished to do so.' Most people in the story are trying to find their position in the fluid intellectual space between Genesis and Darwin.
The hero provokes mixed feelings: we sympathize with his frustrations, but we can't like him, because he is such a clumsy fool in social relations and so dogmatic. He can't handle his attitude towards women: he despises ignorant women and hates intellectual women, but he aims, in his own words, to marry a lady. He is an English Tartuffe without comedic aspects. He is an outright snob.
While the story is specific about being set in England from the 1850s to the 1880s, it has elements that transcend this time and locality. One of its attractions for me is that I find many traces of myself in it, mainly in the young hero's rebellion against fashion and normality. Compared to most Victorian writing that I have reviewed here lately, this is an almost modern approach to the novel.
Unfortunately I bought this book in a ridiculous edition, an A4 typescript, with typos aplenty. Why can't Penguin or Oxford Classics come up with a decent Gissing edition?
Product details
|
Tags : Born in Exile [George Gissing] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The summer day in 1874 which closed the annual session of Whitelaw College was marked by a special ceremony,George Gissing,Born in Exile,CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform,1514870959,Classics,Fiction,Fiction Classics,History - General History,Literature: Classics
People also read other books :
- TIME Barack Obama Eight Years edition by The Editors of Time Politics Social Sciences eBooks
- The Princess the Penis edition by RJ Silver Literature Fiction eBooks
- Legacy YA Dystopian Alliance Book 3 eBook Inna Hardison
- Unexpected Grace A Life in Two Worlds Farifteh Robb 9780996516891 Books
- The Dark Lady A Romance of the Far Future edition by Mike Resnick Romance eBooks
Born in Exile George Gissing 9781514870952 Books Reviews
Whenever I read Gissing, I always marvel at his discipline, He knew his books would not be best sellers; nonetheless, he patiently wrought them to--I will say--perfection. Gissing is right up there with all of his contemporaries, but for some inexplicable reason, he is considered a minor author. He is NOT a minor author. If you haven't read Gissing, I suggest that Henry James, who arrived a generation later, is his closest in style--except that James, once a master of the language, became its slave in his later period. Gissing is always direct, always scrupulously honest. He should have been worshipped by the reading public of his day. I know this sounds like sentimental folly, but I always try to buy a first edition of Gissing, to add to his "sales." I really marvel at his artistry.
As some of the other reviewers mentioned, this novel is concerned with the rigid class system of Victorian times, and also the changing attitudes towards religion. This makes it a somewhat ponderous read these days. You sort of need to know what was a conventional view or both religion and society in those days, and what wasn't.
The novel is about a middle class man who wants desperately to fit in to upper class society. This was easier said than done in those days. He might be an atheist, who believes in evolution... but still he wants gain favor with the "right people." In fact he wants it so bad, that he pretends to be something he is not, and goes so far as to begin studying for the priesthood. Well, when he starts a-courtin' one of the upper class ladies her family finds him out.
Peak feels that he was `born in exile' because he feels he should have been born to the upper classes--in spite of his modern and radical views. He does a lot of crummy things to people around him to gain entrance to "society." So the novel is really about conventions, belief and hypocrisy.
Reading hard and dressing poorly. It is difficult for a poor man to be a freethinker. High self-esteem combined with low self-assertion is Godwin Peak's problem. He sees himself as `born in exile' among poor people, while by rights he should be an upper class intellectual. He is a born aristocrat in his youthful romantic imagination. Eventually he will identify the clergy as his most promising career avenue.
His father was a man of `ungainly integrity', who managed to bankrupt himself and die in relatively young age, leaving a struggling wife with 3 kids. The eldest son inherited from him intellectual curiosity and talent. He goes to school and gets a college scholarship. He passes well while always on the brink of starving. His social skills are non-existent, which condemns him to solitude and isolation.
Then he manages to rise somewhat in life, but not quite to the level of his dreams. He begins to shed his strong principles and thinks about becoming a parson, for the safety of the income. He becomes an outright cynic. What does it matter that he is actually an atheist, as long as he can fool the system and make a career in the church?
`There is no right life in the wrong one' was Theodor Adorno's most famous sentence in his Minima Moralia. That remains a debatable point.
This book appeared first under the title Godwin Peak, after its hero. It was published in 1892, right after New Grub Street, Gissing's better known (but not better) novel about writing and publishing. This is a true novel of ideas. It is mainly about the deprivations suffered by a man who finds himself in the `wrong' station in life. That theme allows plentiful observation on the English caste system in the late Victorian age.
A second main subject is the conflict between `established truth' and heretical thinking, here mainly based on early Darwinism and its rejections. One of the respectable protagonists, treated with much sympathy, is an older gentleman, who `believed because he believed, and avoided the impact of disagreeable arguments because he wished to do so.' Most people in the story are trying to find their position in the fluid intellectual space between Genesis and Darwin.
The hero provokes mixed feelings we sympathize with his frustrations, but we can't like him, because he is such a clumsy fool in social relations and so dogmatic. He can't handle his attitude towards women he despises ignorant women and hates intellectual women, but he aims, in his own words, to marry a lady. He is an English Tartuffe without comedic aspects. He is an outright snob.
While the story is specific about being set in England from the 1850s to the 1880s, it has elements that transcend this time and locality. One of its attractions for me is that I find many traces of myself in it, mainly in the young hero's rebellion against fashion and normality. Compared to most Victorian writing that I have reviewed here lately, this is an almost modern approach to the novel.
Unfortunately I bought this book in a ridiculous edition, an A4 typescript, with typos aplenty. Why can't Penguin or Oxford Classics come up with a decent Gissing edition?
0 Response to "[Y3E]≫ [PDF] Free Born in Exile George Gissing 9781514870952 Books"
Post a Comment