# 427: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “Gaudy Night”
Story behind the Book Choice
This semester is a journey backwards — in time, in place. As a university teacher, I always see myself as a tour guide. I show students different places and routes, sometimes I help them see new gates and maybe I even help them open some. The literature I choose for the classes is the key. The books shape their inner world and some pieces of a puzzle get added. In this case, however, this semester, I am acting as my own tour guide. I am traveling backwards to my roots. I learned reading with detective fiction. When I say “learned” reading, I mean that these books made me fall in love with books. That is the case for many kids, I guess. But not many turn out to be literature professors.
What went wrong in my case?
It is a really intensive journey to be going back to reading literature through the lens I have today. In the course of a long scholarly education, you read hundreds of books, thousands, probably hundreds of thousand pages. All of them leave their traces in your brain and in your heart. But one thing hardly changes: The feelings you have when being absorbed in a story. That is a particular thing about reading fiction, I would argue. Yes, you can also get absorbed by reading a non-fiction book. They also contain stories of their own kind. But really following a plot through 400 or 500 pages, driven by this inner longing to just find out “what happens next,” is a different story.
And it is a privilege to be opening up this world to students.
To hear about their thoughts.
To watch myself listening to their words.
- Education
When I ride the bus these days and I get closer to home, I see the people who went to elementary school with me. Many of them are missing teeth. They are jobless. They live on welfare. They have three kids and no husband anymore. That is when I realize how blessed I am. I really mean blessed. I do not mean “superior.” And that is all because of one thing: The education I received. When young children in Africa are shown to us on television or young girls in Afghanistan fighting for their right to go to school, this is so touching. Yes, education really saves lives. And it is, as Sayers is writing here, irreversible — “inalienable,” as the American Constitution states. Nobody can take it away from you. Nobody can wipe out the expanded horizon in your inner eye.
Only you can take it away
If it drives you crazy
To see all the mysery around you.
A mysery which you cannot do much about
A mysery which is even harder to bare
The more educated you are.
2. Loving detachment
Staying true to yourself and being loved for it is something I already addressed last week when I wrote about Oscar in Bellwether Revivals. Here it appears again as a trait of the main character Harriet. And no matter how often I read about it, it will always touch me again. Yes, being part of something — a group, an institution, a circle of friends — all this might be a gift. But some of us are probably not made for this. We remain the “detached” bystanders. We watch and we choose to stick to our own words and vocabulary to express what we see from the distance.
This is something really annoying to some people.
It can even be dangerous.
In any case, most people do not like it.
Miss de Vine is right.
If you even get loved “because of it,” not “in spite of it,”
That is a value which can hardly be measured by anybody or anything.
Being “sincere” to yourself is the hardest way to happiness.
But the only one possible for some of us — I guess.
3. Head and/or heart
Many years back, somebody told me that I was not willing to make any compromises. I did not know then whether I should take that as a compliment or whether I should feel hurt and take it as an offense. As always, I chose the fighting path — the stubborn one — that allowed me to see this as a strength. Still, I asked myself whether I really was unable to make compromises. I am still in doubt. And it is funny that this connection between compromises and the head/heart dichotomy appears in this book.
There is hardly any other self-doubt that occupies my mind that much. Can we — can I — have a heart as “big” as my head? In other words; is it really my head that forms the most “valuable” part of what I do — of who I am? Do others only see the head in me? Am I not being true to myself if I try to put the heart first — maybe against my inborn nature? And why do I even give a shit about it? Is it only because women for centuries have been facing this inner split and because the outside world imposed it on them or is all this brainfuck really coming from within?
And most importantly: What do I do about it?
The answer probably is: nothing.
I just have to be “sincere,” as explained in the previous passage.
The problem is only that one always judges oneself.
And I do not want to be known as a brilliant brain only.
As a “sachliche Analytikerin” (~ fact-driven analyst).
Even if this is of value to friends.
Even if that can be considered a gift.
Why can I not just be who I am without always having to choose labels for some “bio”?
Maybe we do have to “choose,” as Sayers’ dialogue is suggesting.
But that choice will always be a lie, a camouflage for the outside professional world.
Inside, there is so much more to unfold….
Reflection Questions
1) What is it that “nobody can take away from you” — if all things fail?
2) Do you identify with people who always look at things/people with a certain degree of detachment? Why/not?
3) Do you agree with the fact that one has to choose between head and heart? Do you think there is a gender aspect to this?