{"title":"\"Wandering Free, Wish I Could Be . . .\": Ambition, Art, and Nostalgia in Disney's The Little Mermaid","authors":"Eileen G'Sell","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911585","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911585","url":null,"abstract":"\"Wandering Free, Wish I Could Be . . .\":Ambition, Art, and Nostalgia in Disney's The Little Mermaid Eileen G'Sell (bio) Look at this trove, treasures untold . . . When Disney's The Little Mermaid was released in November of 1989, I was 10 years old. My sisters were eight, six, and four; we were all duly spellbound, as was much of the entire nation. It was the sixth highest-grossing film of the year, said to launch \"The Disney Renaissance,\" a decade that witnessed no fewer than 10 Disney animated features, including The Lion King, which made more money than any traditionally animated film before (or since). I did not know at the time that The Little Mermaid was the film to reanimate Walt's waning empire, but I sensed it—from the spate of \"Part of Your World\" talent show solos to the sold-out Sebastian Christmas ornaments at the local McDonald's. No longer, I thought, would I wonder where all the marvelous fairy-tale movies had gone—the ones like Snow White, Cinderella, or Sleeping Beauty, the ones in which a stunning first soprano leads a dangerous life in a magical forest or castle, the ones with a dazzling female villain who upstages her virtuous prey, the ones that came out decades before I was born. I gravitated to fairy-tale narratives—both in the library and the video store—largely because they featured female protagonists who were beautiful, impeccably dressed, and endured dramatic suffering. These were the same reasons, notably, that I took to certain entries in the sumptuously illustrated A Picture Book of Saints in which Saint Cecilia and Saint Dorothy were my favorites. (Would I prefer to be beheaded or tortured on a wheel?) If someone had asked if I sought to emulate the docile benevolence of either saint or princess, I surely would have been befuddled. Nothing about these women's behavior had anything to do with me. I aspired to their sheen, their grit, their glamor. Plus, the idea that I would ever lead a life half as exciting seemed far-fetched indeed. How many wonders can one cavern hold? Enter The Little Mermaid. Vying for my attention with Don Bluth's All Dogs Go to Heaven (a conviction I already deeply held), released the same weekend, The Little Mermaid sated my appetite for polychromatic splendor [End Page 159] and sartorial novelty (hoop skirts and body-skimming sequins), plus piqued my erotic curiosity for female nudity. (In one shot, Ariel's naughty bits are barely concealed by subaqueous shadow and bubble.) Even better, Ariel, like me, was rather bored by her surroundings; she was rebellious, daring, and playful. She had more personality than all the older princesses combined. One could even say she paved the way for Millennials' prioritization of experience over materialism (\"but who cares . . . no big deal,\" she claims of her thingamabobs). Ariel's shameless ogling of Prince Eric was also about as sex-positive as a Disney movie gets; her gaze mattered more than any other character's, even as she herself was the creation ","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"377 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135736819","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pain Machine, and: Wonder Machine, and: Terror Machine","authors":"Claire Wahmanholm","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911579","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911579","url":null,"abstract":"Pain Machine, and: Wonder Machine, and: Terror Machine Claire Wahmanholm (bio) The rain in the morning isn't good or bad, comforting or threatening. It's not even \"rain.\" —Pema Chödrön Pain Machine But my favorite thing to do is name. My favorite thing to be is rained onand then to say I have been rained on. When I read the word rain I feelthe feeling of being rained on even when there is no rain.It's like having a rain machine. The poem is a rain machine. ButI worry that another name for rain is craving. The poem is a craving machine,but we all know that craving is another name for pain. So the poemis a pain machine. I like this less. But it's my machine, so I guessI can push stop whenever I'd like. I'm not going to push stop yet.There are other ways. For example: the rustle of leaves always sends mehopefully to the window but leaf is not rain unless I close my eyes.So I close them and allow leaf to be rain but why stop there. Wind can be rain,river can be rain, traffic can be rain, [End Page 96] the machine in my pocket is rainand Japanese garden and Finnish sauna and demolition site. In the meantimeI have walked through the traffic and into what we often call the woods.My hair is neither my hair, nor wet. I am many years into what we calla life but which we could easily call a room or a teacup or a demolition site.A machine's name doesn't change how it runs. Rain is not betteror worse than pain. Go ahead and take your finger off that button. [End Page 97] Wonder Machine Anatomy: made of bells or bone. Runs on your own blood. Runs on birdsong. Smells of chrysanthemums orcherry stones (like nothing, like the words themselves). Delves or wheels. Moves like fire in a field; also plinks, alsoevaporates, also condenses onto your face when you walk from here to anywhere. It is everywhere, like my failures—likegraspingness, like envy, like being despicable and assuming humor would save me. I have been petty, have hated, haveintended to wound and then done it; have said just joking without meaning it; have said just tell me with no intention ofkeeping the secret; have puked on my own shoes; have let my longing scare people; have scarred myself; have drunk somuch I wondered if I would die. Haven't. It's a wonder not unlike a lighthouse or a dam or pyramid or anyother marvel of engineering, except there's no engineer. Purpose: to generate further wonders, to be wonderful, toquell an everyday terror. Word-wise, no one knows wonder's root. Like most astonishments, it is unlooked-for, a volunteer.Size: that of a sequoia, that of an opal, that of a tarpaulin, that of a child's ear. Which my body has engineered underun-astonishing circumstances. Most circumstances are so: vermillion sunrises; warm lagoons; not dying. These are defaults. Sowhere is the switch that all machines are built with? Each Xanadu has a button that drains the sacred river. Each of my luckyyeses has been bought with a certain number of noes. All those zeros, and less and less future to f","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737287","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Worst Thing in the World","authors":"Adam D. Jameson","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911572","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911572","url":null,"abstract":"The Worst Thing in the World Adam D. Jameson (bio) I don't remember a time when I wasn't afraid. I got the sweats the moment I set foot in kindergarten. The other kids laughed and tried to spank my ass, threw paper products at my face and clapped the erasers on my head. They kneed my butt and stepped on my feet. I wasn't popular or cool. The moment I walked in the door of the classroom, all my classmates crowded around me, tying my shoelaces together and pouring Elmer's glue in my hair. One month later, it was my birthday, and while they were singing me the song, my nose started bleeding, both nostrils at once, and even today, when one of my former classmates sees me, they ask how I'm doing, they say I look pale, and then they hand me some Kleenex and snicker. But I was just nervous, and think I had the right to be. School is terrible for a child, a terrific shock to the system. You're surrounded by strangers, and you're little, and you know that if your classmates ganged up and came at you at once, swinging and biting, you'd go down. And you can see it in their eyes, their malicious intent. Even when they write you Valentines, and hand you cupcakes topped with candy hearts, you know what they're thinking. People are rotten to the core, is my opinion. They're born that way, and they only get worse. Adults aren't better. Sure, they have schooling, and sure they have jobs, but that doesn't mean they aren't still little creeps. At work we have this manager, Andy, and Andy might be 37, technically speaking, but he's a cretin and a spiteful little infant. He wants to yank the tails of cats and play with his puke and spit out his milk at passersby. You know this the second that you meet him. He's a terror and nobody likes him, especially Holly. She's in my department and she's always in my office; she spends the whole day hiding from Andy as he struts around causing grief. He has a crush on her, we figure, Holly and I. And I don't like him. He's a schlubby awkward fellow, badly dressed and always sweating, constantly tugging at his nose hairs, pulling them out and staring at them before wiping them on his chinos. It's really disgusting, and it grosses Holly out. She says she'd buy him a nose-hair trimmer, they're only 15 bucks at Target, but she can't stand him, she hates him so. And we don't get why no one's told him his habits are ugly, someone he's dated or other employees, or else his own boss. But maybe nobody can stand him? And truth be told, I feel sorry for Andy, because he's a miserable imp, and everyone's pissing their [End Page 57] pants with laughter behind his back, doubled over at their desks while he rushes about, looking desperately for Holly, his hard-on straining the front of his slacks. Which is more evidence if you ask me that people ought to be chopped up and fed to rats. That's something I think about a lot, while taking my long walks around the city. \"You think dark thoughts and you tend to brood,\" Amanda tells me—Amanda's my wif","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"25 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737494","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Enduring the Storm: Dean Young in Strike Anywhere","authors":"Mark Halliday","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911587","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911587","url":null,"abstract":"Enduring the Storm:Dean Young in Strike Anywhere Mark Halliday (bio) Dean Young died in August 2022 at the age of 67. I met Dean in 1992 and our friendship—argumentative and tempestuous but amusing and stimulating—lasted through the 30 years. Our ideas about the basic purpose of poetry were fundamentally opposite. I always wanted poems to clarify life and provide (in Frost's crucial phrase) a stay against confusion. Dean wanted poems to admit to and vivify and embody and protest the confusion he felt was constant and inevitable. We argued and we mocked each other in dozens of letters on paper and conversations and emails. All this seemed to me wonderfully unboring, an enhancement of life. My essay on poems in his 2019 book Solar Perplexus \"Dean Young and the Madding Flood\" appeared in 2021 in The Hopkins Review. After his death I wanted to think further about his work; my essay \"Dean Young: Prince of Our Lostness\" on poems in his 2011 book Fall Higher appeared in Copper Nickel in Spring 2023. And here I am again, wanting to honor his work in a critically serious way. When Dean's third collection, Strike Anywhere, was published in 1995 (by the University Press of Colorado as winner of the Colorado Prize for Poetry, selected by Charles Simic), our ongoing debate was already in full swing, and I saw the book as a decisive step in the wrong direction—toward surrender to chaos, toward frantic swimming in the storm of incomprehensible experience. Because of this impression, I did not read the book very carefully. I was busy worrying about my own aesthetic, and it was easy for me to survey the book quickly and say, \"That's Dean; he does what he does.\" And some of that attitude informed my responses to his many later books. But as Emily Dickinson said, \"Death sets a Thing significant / The Eye had hurried by\"—and now Dean's poems call out to me, deserving recognition of their vigorous, resourceful, authentic expression of his sense of life as storm. Dean felt that any person who is really awake is deluged and swamped: experience pours over us so uncontrollably that our plans and policies and theories are riddled with delusion. There are two ways to transcend—intermittently, temporarily—our typhooned condition: love and art. Some of Dean's poems encourage us to seek help from love and from art but always with anxiety about the nearness of the storm. I want to say, of course, that commitment to poetry—to writing it and reading it—is inherently an [End Page 183] escape from the storm, from our overwhelmedness. Dean did love this idea, as poets do, but he was tensely wary of settling into it complacently. In Strike Anywhere, when we come upon a poem entitled \"Instructions for Living,\" we immediately assume it will be satirical and will expose the absurd pathos in any wise, authoritative life-guidance. And we're right; yet the poem, at the same time, conveys that we do have to live, and we can make some good choices. At different spots in the poem, the advisi","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Letter from the Editor","authors":"","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911561","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911561","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"30 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737505","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Tallycork","authors":"Dagan Brown","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911575","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911575","url":null,"abstract":"Tallycork Dagan Brown (bio) If I made a tally of all the things I'd missed,obvious lessons and lucky offices,opportunities to kiss or be so honestthe plain air of spring thrilled like ice—I might forget it all, grievances pall, reducingeverything to strikes. Like if \"eggs, rice,etc.\" were supposed the sum of life,or, \"call mom. find a better psych.\"But the mind won't stop reeling, returningto where memories are not, but oughtto be. Like a tongue setting each s at a lisp:inevitable & something plush in it. Pity the effective sun at noon Dragooned by God to storm the highest spot in heaven and make us itch On the great blue peasant wall of the sky Clouds are festooned and just as soon tattered Nothing in the sky stays forever Like stars which shining are already gone And even the modern buildings Tromping their way into our natural panoramas Are sure to fall and forfeit The spires which for a moment Made us think we might pluck anything We cared for from the sky You pull me over, my sweet wreck. Your glass is green in piles. O white heat—you make me tired. You make me itch, itch. The leather interiors of cars in summer Are sexy as a sore. Streak of red Under the canopy, fucking with Thick and patiently gathered air. [End Page 73] I could drive on forever, abandoning the frames These windows create, ruining things With smells, but I've got this flimsy engagement, A dinner party on the wind. The displeasure of crunching gravel As it sounds one's arrival: you are on Earth, And it is miserable. Friction Is just things \"putting their foot down.\" The devils-on-horseback are cooling; Shoulders are being grazed. The party winks, turns, And out I go again, onto the open road. There's no denial but the first one There is no freedom but the first And you bit the lip you pinched the tit \"All we wanted was your mouth, your mouth\" The problem is knowing of others' existence,knowing it abstractly or selectively, wishingyou knew them actually, but only kissing dumbscreens. (So many dumb screens! Pucker up,suckerfish.) On the wide roads of Tallulah, my parentswaved hi to each ass straddling its fence.And encyclopedias held the lives of impossible men.It all induced a far-off misty look, sure, but nevera green eye struck with proximate particulate.What stuck were stories about Uncle Woogie,who'd say \"Woogy, woogy, woogy!\" when he greeted you,or Madea, who said, \"Gimme some sugar,\"then slipped you her tongue like a butterscotch.These stories are the perfect shade of green. I wishI were so situated, like a tree, the same sort of applesalways rolling around (or at least when seasonal,all good being provisional), and people, like bees or squirrels, [End Page 74] needing one in the same, specific ways. The easy fitof boyhood conversation. Everyone waits for the otherto say something dense, so they can laugh. And no talkof how you like them or they you, but simply knowing it.Slapping necks, bloodying knuckles, mussed hairon the old school bus. Down the carpet staircase de","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"31 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737736","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Need to Breathe / 呼吸的需要, and: My Solidification / 我之固體化, and: If There Is a War Far Away / 如果遠方有戰爭, and: A Penny / 一枚銅幣, and: Lethe / 忘川","authors":"Kwang-Chung Yu","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911567","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911567","url":null,"abstract":"The Need to Breathe / 呼吸的需要, and: My Solidification / 我之固體化, and: If There Is a War Far Away / 如果遠方有戰爭, and: A Penny / 一枚銅幣, and: Lethe / 忘川 Yu Kwang-Chung (bio) Translated from the Chinese by Yifan Zhang The Need to Breathe Because I am alsoa dicotyledon angiospermwith a strong attachment to the native landand a set flowering season. I often think of suicidein the suspicious zonebetween the afternoon and the night. And I have died more than once.Painting life on death'sbackground has allowed itthe beauty of a relief carving. As a result, with such a desireto grasp this world,I reach out numerous fingers to grip the dirt,open many pulmonary lobes to breathe deeplythe early spring, virgin air. March 9, 1959 [End Page 28] 呼吸的需要 因我也是一棵鄉土觀念很重的雙葉科的被子植物，且有一定的花季。 常想自殺在下午與夜的可疑地帶。 而我曾死過不止一次。因此，在死的背景上畫生命，更具浮雕的美了。 因此，我是如此的想把握這世界，而伸出許多手指來抓住泥土，張開許多肺葉來深呼吸早春的，處女空氣。 四八 •三 • 九 [End Page 29] My Solidification In this class, as if afloat in a global cocktail,I remain an ice cube, refusing to melt—keeping my freezing intact,maintaining a solid state. I used to be fluid,loving the flow, boiling's joy.I played as vapor down the rainbow slide. But with the sun of China too far from me,I have crystallized, clear and hard,unable to restore myself. March 10, 1959, midnight Note: In the same class there are Filipinos, Australians, Irishmen, and, of course, many Yankees. [End Page 30] 我之固體化 在此地，在國際的雞尾酒裡，我仍是一塊拒絕溶化的冰——常保持零下的冷和固體的堅度。 我本來也是很液體的，也很愛流動，很容易沸騰，很愛玩虹的滑梯。 但中國的太陽距我太遠，我結晶了，透明且硬，且無法自動還原。 1959.3.10 午夜 附注：同班有菲律賓人、日本人、澳大利亞人、愛爾蘭人，當然， 還有許多美國的北佬們。 [End Page 31] If There Is a War Far Away If there is a war far away, should I shield my earsor should I sit up, listening, with guilty attention?Should I cover my nose, or draw a deep breathof the pungent burning stench?Should my ears listen to your passionate pantingor to the grenade propagating truth?Mottos, medals, supplies.Can these satisfy insatiable death?If there is a war tormenting a faraway nation,merciless tanks plowing the spring soil,an infant wails loudly at the mother's corpse,wailing at a sightless, tongueless tomorrow.If there is a nun cremating herself,the ascetic body fat crackles, spitting despair,withered limbs embracing nirvanain pursuit of a futile gesture.If we are in bed while they are on the battleground,planting peace over barbed wire,should I panic or give thanks,that I am making love, not locked in combat,that it's your naked body clutched in my arms, not the enemy?If there is a war far away, and we are far away,you are a merciful angel, feathers white and spotless;you lean over the sickbed, look at me there,in a bloody battlefield hospital,missing a hand, a foot, an eye, a sex.If there is a war far away, ah such war,my love, if we are far away. February 11, 1967 [End Page 32] 如果遠方有戰爭 如果遠方有戰爭，我該掩耳或是坐起來，慚愧地傾聽？應該掩鼻，或該深呼吸難聞的焦味？我的耳朵應該聽你喘息的愛情或聽榴彈宣揚真理？格言、勳章、補給能不能餵飽無饜的死亡？如果有戰爭煎熬一個民族，在遠方有戰車狠狠地犁過春泥有嬰孩在號啕，向母親的屍體號啕一個盲啞的明天如果一個尼姑在火葬自己寡慾的脂肪炙響一個絕望燒曲的四肢抱住涅盤為了一種無效的手勢，如果我們在床上，他們在戰場在鐵絲網上播種著和平我應該惶恐，或是該慶幸慶幸是做愛，不是肉搏是你的裸體在臂中，不是敵","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737738","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Transit of Venus and the Hope of the Reader","authors":"David Wyatt","doi":"10.1353/thr.2023.a911586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/thr.2023.a911586","url":null,"abstract":"The Transit of Venus and the Hope of the Reader David Wyatt (bio) When Samuel Johnson wrote about \"the hope of the reader,\" he was addressing Shakespeare's risky decision to revise the traditional happy ending of the King Lear story by killing off both Cordelia and her father. Johnson much preferred \"the final triumph of persecuted virtue\" as originally recorded in the old chronicles and, therefore, eagerly embraced Nahum Tate's decision to restore to the plot of the play its original closure in which both father and daughter have \"always retired with victory and felicity.\" As in Shakespeare, Shirley Hazzard's third novel—this is Johnson again—\"always makes us anxious for the event.\" That we are entering a fiction in which our hopes will be aroused and tested is made evident in the third paragraph of The Transit of Venus (Viking, 1980) when Hazzard writes, \"A frame of almost human expectancy defined this scene.\" Hazzard, too, conducts her readers through a series of highly dramatic—even melodramatic—scenes. In doing so, she secures \"the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity, and compelling him that reads his work to read it through.\" From its opening pages, Hazzard freights her novel with a sense of the \"portentous.\" The first sentence is also a single paragraph: \"By nightfall the headlines would be reporting devastation.\" The rainstorm then described unfolds by way of a deluge of melodramatic verbs: lowered, petrified, sprang, lacerated, swept, wagged, charged, dodged, bunged, upturned, raced, ran, slammed. In the flurry of all this activity the man who is walking through the landscape can look small indeed. As Hazzard's verbs demonstrate, \"Everything had the threat and promise of meaning.\" She offers up this sentence at the end of Chapter 2: \"Later on,\" Hazzard continues, \"there would be more and more memories, less and less memorable. It would take a bombshell, later, to clear the mental space for such a scene as this.\" And then another one-sentence paragraph: \"Everything was banked up around the room, a huge wave about to break.\" In The Transit of Venus, nothing is promised that is not performed, although its readers will have to wait until the final words of the novel for the wave to break, for \"the great gasp of hull and ocean as a ship goes down.\" None of this makes it easy, as Johnson writes, \"to read it through.\" As Francis Steegmuller once said about his wife's novel, \"No one should have to read it for the first time.\" The difficulty of getting on with Hazzard's novel [End Page 167] arises, I have come to believe, from our being encouraged to expect while also being made to wait. While most novels of any length make such a demand on their readers, Hazzard intensifies the tension between expecting and waiting by continually reminding us, as in the sentence about \"meaning,\" of the demands she is placing upon us. It is as if we are being asked to read two novels at once: the represented action, about wh","PeriodicalId":485043,"journal":{"name":"The Hopkins Review","volume":"96 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135737872","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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