Robert H. Canary

Useful counterpoint to Godshalk's essays. Canary summarizes his position:

"For some readers, Cabell's defense of Romance is persuasive; taking the Cabellian ideal for the Cabellian reality and 'dynamic illusions' for more than useful lies, they take pleasure in a Cabell scene quite unlike that I have described. That Cabell can be read in this way is surely part of his continuing appeal, though I must confess that I cannot understand or sympathize with such readings. For other Cabell readers, myself included, the pleasure is in the comedy of the disparity between the ideal and the reality, and the comedy is sharper because the ideals were once our own, though we have since lost or replaced them." [122]

In four essays expanded from his doctoral thesis, Canary keenly points out Cabell's negative portrayal of women in novels; his Mencken-like conservatism (finding the world flawed and irreparable, not as a partisan of electoral politics); and traces the theme of heroes who resign themselves to their reality rather than attain their stated goals.

Canary's various observations are insightful, but somehow don't come together for me in quite the way they do for him. We differ in our reading of what Cabell amounts to: I look to an authorial position "behind" the novels, Canary limits himself to a "strict interpretation" of Cabell's text. Canary rarely wonders what Cabell's artistic intention or personal preferences might be, and for the most part I don't argue these points -- as far as they go. (When Canary does address Cabell's biography, primarily he notes specific ways that events disclosed in Cabell's non-fiction are reflected in Cabell's novels.) But I take from Cabell an implicit intent which guides my overall appreciation. I find Cabell more of an optimist than does Canary, without assuming Cabell "defends" Romance simpliciter. Rather, Romance is an equal partner of pragmatism in Cabell's outlook, and not mere illusion as Canary seems to argue.

Perhaps a key question: whether Cabell's stories and characters amount to Cabell's normative position, or whether they provide Fabian instruction. I lean toward the latter.… (meer)