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I greatly enjoyed reading Author Unknown. The topic was interesting, as were Foster’s methods and writing style. He continued to toss off priceless lines, like the one I mentioned before. (All page references will be from the Henry Holt first edition.)
“Professors of literature are rarely required to be ‘right’ about anything. In my academic discipline, we don’t usually produce facts — we produce incredibly clever interpretive commentary.” (p. 70)
“Philip Hone, onetime mayor of new York, speaks of the hotheaded Professor’s ‘attic fire’ — which was probably a compliment, meaning something like ‘Athenian intensity,’ but it’s also true that you never knew when the professor’s roof would blow[...].” (p. 247. I think this is hilarious; if you don’t get it yet, try pronouncing “attic fire” with and without the third syllable stressed.)
Foster had me laughing at numerous points during the book. He has a distinctive tone of humorous derision, a couple examples of which I will cite:
“In New England, to protect children from this pernicious practice [of parents' leaving gifts for children on Saint Nicholas Day], veneration of Saint Nicholas was made a criminal offense. (Christmas cookies in the State of Massachusetts were not decriminalized until 1681.)” (p. 225)
“Moore [...] thought it his bounden duty, as a faculty member of the General Theological Seminary, to keep close watch on the subverters of public morals, such as Thomas Jefferson.” (p. 257)
There is much of Foster’s writing that is distinctive; doubtless I noticed this because Foster spent much of the book pointing out distinctive traints of other authors. I made note of a few amusing ones, elements that might come in handy if someone ever wants to attribute an anonymous work to Foster….
- On page 54, and again on page 73, he refers to a “sports coat”. This is certainly not rare, but not most common either. An AltaVista Search shows that “sport coat” occurrs 4,996 times in the index, “sportcoat” 2,222 times. But “sports coat” occurs only 2,089 times. Only “sportscoat” (497 occurrences) shows up less frequently than this.
- Foster enjoys constructing mock definitions of phrases for comic effect:
“This is what is known by Pentagon strategists as ‘a preemptive strike,’ and in Anglo-American literary studies as ‘business as usual.’” (p. 45)
“Scholars call this practice ‘due caution.’ The rest of the English-speaking world calls it ‘covering your ass.’” (p. 70)
“This is what is known to magazine editors as ‘point-sharpening,’ and to scholars as suicide.” (p. 70)
- He also enjoys putting imaginary sentences into his subjects’ mouths for the sake of comedy:
“The concern in that first paragraph with bedroom politics and masculine virility was another tipoff that [the article] was written by Joe Klein — and that he was writing against [my article] “Primary Culprit.” (See? The professor got me all wrong! Anonymous is wayyy hetero!)” (p. 90)
“The defense’s argument seemed audacious (We don’t believe that the prosecution witness even read these documents — we know ours sure didn’t!).” (p. 109)
- The final one I’ll mention is a more serious variant of the “humorous derision” discussed above. He will present the views of his subject straightforwardly, implicitly trusting that the reader will agree with the absurdity of the statement:
“Anonymous seemed to think like Joe Klein. [...] Good blacks are hardworking, middle-class, nonthreatening. Bad blacks need quotas, affirmitive action, welfare, gerrymandering.” (p. 69)
“The ideal woman, for Moore, is ‘noiseless.’” (p. 246)
It is fun to pick apart a writer’s text that deals with picking apart other writers’ texts… :-)
On the whole, I think highly of the book. I would be remiss, however, if I did not point out the few points that bothered me.
- Foster lapses into Freudian analysis in a couple places, with skepticism-inducing results:
“At a critical moment, [Klein] tripped over his own tongue [on the tape recording]: ‘I am busy covering the pen — uh, the presidential campaign.’ (Classic Freudian slip: I can’t allow my pen to be exposed — uh, no scratch that.)” (p. 81, emphasis his.)
and
“Anonymous half-acknowledges something else [...]: ‘I feel a little bit like Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve, minus a face. Which is not to say that I consider myself two-faced‘ (my [Foster's] emphasis). The addition of that seemingly unnecessary afterthought is a little like saying to your therapist, ‘Doc, tonight I feel a little bit like a tragic hero. Which is not to say that I feel an urge to kill my fater and marry my mother.’ Red flag!” (p. 86, emphasis his.)
Stick with the literary analysis, doc.
- He seems a bit unfair with Joe Klein (Anonymous) at times; he takes a cheap shot on page 91 when he begins a sentence “Trying to walk a mile in Klein’s Armani shoes,” as if Klein’s income has anything to do with questions of literary attribution. And he labels his explicit baiting of Klein, suggesting he may be a homosexual when Foster knew this not to be the case, as “harmless mischief”; one wonders if the professor’s evaluation would be as even-handed if Klein had baited him with an accusation he knew to be unfounded.
- Foster sees a portrait of Major Henry Livingston, whose descendents were claiming that he (Livingston) wrote “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas”. Foster describes his encounter with the painting:
“I found the Major’s countenance a little disappointing: wooden expression, clean-shaven, George Washington smile, nothing like Santa. I could not imagine the man in the the picture with a belly that shook when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly.” (p. 253)
Yet thirteen pages later we find:
“Moore [gives] one more indication that he stole “Christmas” — Santa Claus, sleigh, reindeer, and all — from a portly rubicund Dutchman named Henry Livingston.” (p. 266)
Did Foster forget what Livingston looked like? Was this wishful thinking taking over his memory?
- Finally, there is one that just plain puzzles me. On page 249, he writes:
“An overindulgent and playful father, Henry Livingston taught his children by example, without paying adequate attention to the Good Book and without corporal punishment.”
The use of the word “adequate” is surprising. Livingston is being compared against the strict and pious Moore, but the context does not imply to me that Foster meant “adequate in Moore’s eyes.” It also seems out of character for this to be Foster’s judgement: nowhere else do I get the sense of Foster being an excessively religious man. I am left simply confused by this passage.
Two final points: I learned the word mendacity on page 87, which has a nice ring to it. And second, a plea: if someone can help me parse this sentence (from page 246) I would be grateful: “No person so seemingly virtuous or beautiful but that Professor Scrooge’s pen can detect a rottenness at the core[...].” I cannot find a use of “but” that makes this sentence intelligible. “But that” can mean “with the exception that”, “except that”, “save that”, “were it not that”, or “unless”. None of these makes sense. My read is that Foster means “Regardless of how seemingly virtuous or beautiful a person is, Professor Scrooge’s pen can detect a rottenness at the core.” Is his usage of “but that” correct?
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