`Innumerable Prejudices'

Samuel Johnson writes in The Rambler, No. 21 (May 29, 1750):

“We are blinded in examining our own labours by innumerable prejudices. Our juvenile compositions please us, because they bring to our minds the remembrance of youth; our later performances we are ready to esteem, because we are unwilling to think that we made no improvement; what flows easily from the pen charms us, because we read with pleasure that which flatters our opinion of our own powers; what was composed with great struggles of the mind we do not easily reject, because we cannot bear that so much labour should be fruitless. But the reader has none of these prepossessions, and wonders that the authour is so unlike himself, without considering that the same soil will, with different culture, afford different products.”

Writing is an intensely private business performed in public. Its peculiar, bifold nature leaves us susceptible to all the traps set by our self-centeredness: rationalization, over-sensitivity, blindness, resentment and general self-puffery.

On Wednesday, I wrote a post about A Dance to the Music of Time, by Anthony Powell, in which I referred to his 12-novel cycle as a “roman a fleuve,” which is accurate but not pertinent to the point I was trying to make. I was thinking “roman a clef” but writing “roman a fleuve.” My knee-jerk excuses, which “flatter my opinion of my powers,” as Johnson would say, include holiday bustle, tiredness, bad French and impatience (note that Kafka diagnosed impatience as a form of laziness). All are accurate and none is satisfactory. It was simple carelessness, and a thoughtful, sharp-eyed reader caught my mistake. In his/her anonymous comment, he/she writes, more articulately than I:

“Roman a fleuve or roman a clef? I believe DMOT could be considered pretty indisputably a fleuve, less so a clef, which is your point I think. Famous characters such as Bernard Montgomery are acknowledged with little attempt at masking (I think Monty’s name is actually used, for one); does this illegitimate DMOT as a roman a clef? Can friends and acquaintances of the author be considered significant enough models to make their fictional counterparts a clef, e.g. Widmerpool, even if they have minor notoriety in the public sphere? Such a reduction leads pretty easily to absurdity, with any novel that mixes in the author’s experience being a potential “roman a clef,” which is as you say an uninteresting approach to DMOT.”

What impresses and pleases me about the comment is the writer’s civility, his/her devotion to understanding and appreciation, not pointing out an error to make himself look good. I detect no swagger of self-triumph, so typical of much online discourse. Many e-mails and comments sent to my blog and others sound petulant and scolding, like my younger sons when they win at Chutes and Ladders. This is criticism that educates. I hope, Mr./Ms. Anonymous, you will write again