The intellectual bling of Terry Castle

So, I'm not an intellectual. There are some people who read with interest and awe-inspiring enjoyment academic tomes on their favorite topic or Greek tragedy or Proust. Not me. The bustling literary marketplace always seems to hold something just a bit more compelling, like the latest in an ever-growing list of favorite mystery series, or some nerdy nonfiction (I recently read an ode to librarians called This Book is Overdue. Cool!) You know, something entertaining. Something mainstream. Something written with a general audience in mind. For a bibliophile, I can't claim to have delved very deeply or esoterically into my hobby of choice. A nice, broad survey of the literary landscape is more my speed. Any cred I get only comes from reading fast enough, and often enough, to cover a lot of ground.

But every once in awhile, a gem of a book comes along that is both ridiculously fun and smart (and not science fiction, which is regularly both). Intellectual smart. And I remember that, while I might not be a real intellectual, I love hanging around them, literarily speaking. To me, these authors are like glassblowers or acrobats. They possess a rare, special gift worthy of being ooohed and ahhed by the general public, or at least their adoring fans. This is not to detract for the workaday writers I can't do without. After all, watching glassblowing or high-wire daredevilry would get tiresome eventually. But there is something absolutely rapturous in the combination of true braininess and excellent, lucid writing. As anyone who's been to college knows, the two do not frequently go hand in hand.

The latest jewel in this rarefied collection is The Professor and Other Writings by Terry Castle, humanities professor at Stanford and apparently hugely well-known literary critic in intellectual circles (hence, not to most of us...). Sure, she's an expert in 18th century literature (ghost stories, according to Wikipedia!), but her command of the English language regularly transforms the page from a literary work (words adding up to something beautiful) into what can only be described as an artistic portrait of word usage. So that you could take the page, frame it and put it in the Louvre titled "The word 'adumbrate' in context." Terry Castle (b. 1953), and everyone would know exactly why it was there. I throw around the word 'page' loosely here. I'm reading the book on my Kindle, and thank God, given the number of times I've had to use the built-in dictionary. I haven't seen some of these words in print since the SAT, if ever. This just adds to the deep affection for, say, the casual use of 'tyro' in the first essay. I remember learning that word around the same time my 11th grade English class was reading The Tempest, and I always thought it'd make a great name for a Shakespeare character: Prospero, Benvolio, Horatio, Tyro. Castle, of course, uses it correctly to mean a beginner or newbie. And she just drops it in, no muss, no fuss. It's thrilling.

There's also the actual content of the essays, all of which are highly personal, even blog-like, reflections on various passions (World War I, music, interior design, rubber stamps, just to name a few) with plenty of family drama, relational angst and pop culture references thrown in. You don't have to be particularly interested in the topic to get sucked in. In fact, it might be better to start without strong feelings either way because Castle, like all good writers, has enough enthusiasm (and opinions) for all of us. I read with fascination her deconstruction of home decor magazines through the lens of the post-9/11 world, where both her love of interior design and her unease with its inherent, perhaps morally questionable, middle-class escapism, come through in equal measure. Maybe I like her writing so much because no matter how refined (or not) the topic, there is always a noticeable dose of heart and self-reflective (even self-deprecating) humor woven in.

Though I can connect with almost none of the topics (not that it matters), who Castle is is very appealing, as are some of her less-explored asides. I'm actually super psyched to find a intellectual woman writer from California who is not Joan Didion (I know some of you are fans, but her writing doesn't have enough heart for me.) Castle's parents are British, but she was born in San Diego and spent all but three years of her childhood in Southern California. She writes about the state with the fondness and honesty of a native, using it as more than a backdrop, but not quite a character in several essays. I love how she captures that "more than just scenery" aspect of living and traveling in California. It makes my own native heart smile.

She also has a (to me) refreshingly and unashamedly post-Freudian view of being a lesbian. She examines head-on some of her more gendered, even 'masculine' ideas without (in my opinion) once suggesting that being a lesbian somehow involves wanting to be a man. She writes (too briefly) about the affection between straight men and lesbians in a way that suggests feminist scholars would swoon dead away at the thought. (She even calls it "the real love that dare not speak its name.") The friendship between gay men and straight women has been examined, even televised (hello Will & Grace), but that a similar fondness could grow between lesbians and straight guys is somehow beyond the pale? I look forward to hearing more from Castle about this, especially since I don't get what the big deal is, despite all those women's studies classes under my belt.

In fact, I want to hear more from Castle about pretty much everything, which is why I'll be looking up her oeuvre and digging in over the next few months. I recommend you do the same, starting with this book. If you do, let me know! We can trade our favorite word-usage portraits and admire the trove of sparkling sentences and shiny insights. Intellectual bling at its finest, even for those of us who aren't intellectuals.