The Way We Live Now (Trollope, 1875)

Anthony Trollope. The Way We Live Now. Pub. 1875. Ed. Francis O'Gorman. Oxford: World's Classics, 2016.

• Pub serially 2/1874-9/1875 in 20 monthly numbers, a throwback in 1875, then in 2 vol by Bradbury and Evans
• Good for: tension btwn old material form and new world of globalized capital; Lady Carbury as a commercial author

General Notes

• 29 "It was a ball on a scale so magnificent that it had been talked about ever since Parliament met, now about a fortnight since." -- interesting technique for keeping the narrative feeling temporally proximate: "now"
• 30 Melmotte the financier introduced
• 52 the verbal patterning of indeterminacy - Montague's father might have had money, Lady c doesn't quite know what attending to her profligate son would entail - track
• 60-1 perhaps in Roger's refusal to have anything to do with the Melmottes a conflict between the class system and the rank system? He disdains the duchesses' condoning of Melmotte and espouses rural bourgeois gentry values. Interesting that capital takes up with rank
• 62 "A social connection with the first crossing-sweeper would be less objectionable" -- Bleak House (1853)
• 190 [Lord Alfred telling Melmotte how easily a baronetcy could be bought] Indeed, there was no knowing what honors might not be achieved in the present days by money scattered with a liberal hand.
  • his satire is pointed but is this really such a characteristic of the then present age or just exacerbated?

Theme Tracking

Reading/Writing

• 11: "He [Booker] was quite adept at this sort of work, and knee well how to review such a book as Lady Carbury's Criminal Queens, without bestowing much trouble on the reading. He could almost do it without cutting the book, so that it's value of after sale might not be injured."
• 22 Hetta Carbury's face was a "true index" to her character: could you trace the link between indexical/informational forms of literature and understanding character? Has anyone?
  • 196 Mrs Hurtle's true vs made-up features
• 73 "Melmotte had the telegraph at his command, and had been able to make as close inquiries as though San Francisco and Salt Lake City had been suburbs of London."
  • its not so much that it's new technology as that it's a relatively new tech in the service of globalized capital
• the theme of the breakdown between writing and truth: Lady carbury's factless sensational history (82), her doubt that her son tells her the truth in writing but that she believes in him anyway (397), the IOUs from the Bear garden that are worthless (186) - this cluster of images of writing not worth the paper they're on plugging into the theme of uncertainty and rumor
• 340 As for many years past we have exchanged paper instead of actual money for our commodities, so now it seemed that, under the new Melmotte regime, an exchange of words was to suffice
• 667 Material form as a limit on representation (see [[Buurma 2013):

It cannot with truth be said of her that she had had any special tale to tell. She had taken to the writing of a novel because Mr. Loiter had told her that upon the whole novels did better than anything else. She would have written a volume of sermons on the same encouragement, and have gone about the work exactly after the same fashion. The length of her novel had been her first question. It must be in three volumes, and each volume must have three hundred pages. But what fewest number of words might be supposed sufficient to fill a page? The money offered was too trifling to allow of very liberal measure on her part. She had to live, and if possible to write another novel,—and, as she hoped, upon better terms,—when this should be finished. Then what should be the name of her novel; what the name of her hero; and above all what the name of her heroine? It must be a love story of course; but she thought that she would leave the complications of the plot to come by chance,—and they did come. "Don't let it end unhappily, Lady Carbury," Mr. Loiter had said, "because though people like it in a play, they hate it in a book. And whatever you do, Lady Carbury, don't be historical. Your historical novel, Lady Carbury, isn't worth a—" Mr. Loiter stopping himself suddenly, and remembering that he was addressing himself to a lady, satisfied his energy at last by the use of the word "straw." Lady Carbury had followed these instructions with accuracy.

Shakespeare References

• 7 Lady Carbury's Criminal queens: "Cleopatra, of course, I have taken from shakespeare"