"It happened to catch my eye in the paper yesterday that someone was to be hanged at Newgate this morning. There’s a certain satisfaction in reflecting that it is not oneself."
This is how Jasper Milvain is introduced in New Grub Street, making pleasant conversation over breakfast with his sisters and mother. One-third through the book, I wished that Jasper was hanged at Newgate. Two-thirds through the book, the I wished I was hanged at Newgate.
There are books (few though they may be) that I actually dislike. And among that handful, New Grub Street ranks high as one I truly despise on myriad levels. I’m reviewing it for two reasons: to warn anyone who is reading this to avoid this book at all costs, and to be able to delete it from my e-reader with the satisfaction of first venting my grievances against it.
In essence, this is a story about writer’s block. Not that this is Gissing’s intended theme--which is something to do with the corruption of writing as an art by publishers and critics into something commercial and petty--but because the majority of the page count is devoted to people having writer’s block, that’s what it really is about.
As the story opens, the Milvain family is discussing their impending poverty. The only son, Jasper, has been sucking the family funds dry insisting on getting an education so that he can become a magazine writer. He does this knowing that his mother is ill, and should she die his two sisters will have nothing to live on because he’s spent all their inheritance. This does not bother Jasper at all, as he has some vague idea of helping his sisters out when he eventually graduates and gets a job making money by writing pulpy trash for the masses.
In the meantime, Jasper figures his sisters can help make do with their dwindling capital by writing some pulpy trash themselves: moral stories for Sunday School magazines, for example. Note that they didn’t need to spend a fortune on a worthless education to do this. Despite not really wanting or enjoying writing, Maud and Dora eventually follow their brother’s advice because the only alternative is starvation or governessing.
The conveniently sick Mrs. Milvain dies inevitably, and as expected her children are plunged into poverty. Jasper weasels his way into a magazine job as a book reviewer, and convinces his sisters to give up their family home for cheaper--shabbier--rooms in London.
Meanwhile, Jasper has also made the acquaintance of the Yule family as part of his professional connections. The Yule family has three branches:
First: John Yule, who made a fortune on papermaking. A businessman, he hates literary groups, which does nothing to help his relationship with his brother Alfred. The only role he plays is that he's rich and old and so everyone is waiting for him to die so they can hopefully inherit his money.
Second: Alfred, who entered into the literary business. He’s climbed the ladder of society and fame, which has not been easy since he recklessly married a lower-class woman who he’s now ashamed of and whose presence keeps him from going to parties to make good impressions and social connections. They have a daughter, Marian, who works for him as a sort of research assistant. It’s plain that Marian is the one doing all of his work at this point, while he takes all the writing credit.
Third: Edmund Yule, on the other hand, joined his brother John in the family business, but they quarreled and Edmund died, leaving his widow and two children with only a small income.
It is the Alfred Yule branch that Jasper becomes connected to, romancing the smart and kind daughter Marian. However, because Jasper is employed by a magazine run by one of Alfred Yule’s competitors, Alfred makes Marian’s life intolerable by sulking, silent treatments, insulting her mother, and pressure to do more work for him. Marian’s only solace and friendship is with Jasper’s sisters, who are now living in poverty but share not only her sympathetic temperament but also the work of writing.
Running parallel to Jasper’s life is the life of Edwin Reardon and his wife Amy. Amy is the daughter of Edmund Yule, and married Reardon believing that he would be a famous author one day. While Reardon is an academic and possibly a literary genius, her ambitions for him have fallen short. After a few middling successes with three volume novels, Reardon has hit writer’s block.
So begins an insufferably long episode of Reardon trying to write, not being able to write, his wife nagging him to write, them starting to starve, Amy telling him to write just anything, Jasper coming to visit him and telling him to write the sort of fluff that the masses like just to get some money, Reardon refusing to “sell out” and finally getting some stuffy intellectual work published that is critically acclaimed by other writers but popularly ignored by readers...and so it goes on.
What is infuriating is not only Reardon’s insipid nature, Amy’s shallowness, and their increasing arguments where each of them refuses to sympathize or try to understand each other...what is infuriating to me is the underlying insinuation that “the masses” do not appreciate good writing, and that all they want is “fluff.”
Reardon begins to get himself sick from stressing over his writing, so Amy decides she should “go back to Mother’s” and he can go rent some cheap place by the sea to regain his strength and maybe write something in the peace away from London. Reardon, however, thinks it would be better to get another job and take a break from writing altogether, and so impulsively takes the first clerk position that comes along. Amy is horrified at being the wife of a clerk and refuses to go with him to less expensive lodgings. Instead she goes back to her mother’s, abandoning Reardon to his growing sense of despair and depression.
Adding to this pressure is that Amy’s brother John (not to be confused with John Yule, the rich uncle...though one wonders whether he was named after him as a way of kissing up) is just as much a sponge on his mother’s limited finances as Jasper was. He is none to happy to have Amy and her baby son syphoning off any part of what he considers “his” money (though his mother has kept secret the fact that they’re already broke, and only keeps up appearances by refusing to pay their servants a fair wage). He goes to Reardon and guilt-trips him into sending the majority of whatever money he makes in his clerkship to Amy for child support. Reardon is too proud to argue, and so lives in squalor and starvation in order to send the money to his wife...who in turn is too proud to do anything with it but put it in a savings account.
As Reardon’s star is descending, Jasper Milvain’s is ascending, due in most part to his mercenary and heartless ability to do whatever his publisher wants him to do even if it hurts his friends--or his girlfriend’s father, specifically. He also doesn’t flinch in criticizing Reardon if he thinks it will improve his own status in literary circles.
The end the story is wrought with tragedy that, by the time I got to the end, didn’t affect me much as I was sick of pretty much all of the main characters. Still, Gissing also decided to ruin the lives of some of the secondary characters I actually still cared about, so it further disgusted me.
Biffen, one of the few friends of Reardon who not only stuck by him in his suffering, but actually had been even worse off, finally finishes his magnum opus. Upon returning to his lodgings after a brisk victory walk in the London night, he finds the entire building has caught fire. He completes a daring rescue of the one copy of his completed manuscript, but all his other possessions are destroyed. Now he is literally dependent on his novel’s success...and, probably due to Jasper’s machinations--though Gissing makes it sound like it’s also the uncivilized populance’s inability to appreciate great literature--it fails.
Now, until this point Biffen has been portrayed as a sort of starving artist who is philosophical enough to rebound from failure in a way that Reardon is not. However, he also is in love with Reardon’s wife, Amy. In the hopelessness of this feeling, he reacts to the failure of his novel by committing suicide. This made me so mad, because Amy is such a pill and yet all the male characters are in love with her just because she’s pretty--in fact, some even find her pride to be an attractive quality!
Jasper has somewhat unwillingly become engaged to Marian Yule, but then Marian’s father Alfred goes blind, and his literary business fails, and so Marian feels compelled to prolong their engagement so that she can help her family financially by continuing to do all the writing her father has taken credit for all these years.
Then the rich brother/uncle John Yule finally dies, but Jasper is highly disappointed to find out that his fiancee has received only a small fraction of his fortune--only enough to live modestly upon--while her cousin Amy has received the bulk of it.
Amy sends for Reardon in the hope of some sort of reconciliation--more because she’s disgraced as a separated woman who left her husband than because of any true desire to heal their relationship--but Reardon is too proud and refuses to live off his wife’s money. The only thing that brings him back to her side is a message that their child is dying. Although he does not love his own son, Reardon goes to comfort Amy, using up the last of his money on a train ticket and neglecting his own health in a way that hammers the last nail in his own coffin. After a brief reconciliation with Amy, Reardon dies of brain fever.
As soon as the richer cousin is conveniently free, Jasper breaks his engagement to Marian and goes to Amy to catch her on the rebound. Marian is left with her blind dad who keeps rubbing this tragedy in her face as she struggles to support him and her mother by herself.
The only “happy” part of the ending is that Jasper’s sisters finally get out from under his selfish tyranny. Maud, the more mercenary of the two, makes high society friends and “fakes” being richer than she is long enough to land a wealthy husband. Dora, who is probably my favorite character, marries one of Jasper’s literary friends, the chronically romantic and good-hearted Whelpdale, who gives up his paltry literary aspirations for a more mundane and reliable job. Dora is also the only person in the book who sees Amy for the scheming horrible cat she is, and refuses to socialize with her even after Amy marries her brother.
This book was disappointing on so many levels. The male characters are so sexist and oppressive, and the only woman spoken of in positive light is the worst. There is so much hypocrisy embedded into the story: don’t sell out, but don’t write stuff people don’t like, don’t get a normal job, but don’t allow your family to live in poverty. What makes it even worse is that a brief perusal of the author’s life shows that much of New Grub Street is semi-autobiographical...and he’s pretty much the Jasper Milvain character. I had hoped that Gissing would prove another Victorian author I could collect and enjoy, joining the ranks of Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle. But because of this one book, I refuse to read another word written by this jerk.
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