Pleasing Myself
by Frank Kermode
Allen Lane $340
FRANK KERMODE IS one of Britain's most respected academics. Pleasing Myself contains essays he wrote for literary journals on both sides of the Atlantic in the 1990s.
As each piece is self-contained, this is the sort of book that can be dipped into from time to time. There is an eclectic mix, not quite something for everyone, but when I struggled with an esoteric piece on obscure poets or modern art, I could find other material more to my taste.
His essay on Shakespeare is particularly good - hardly surprising given that he wrote the best-seller Shakespeare's Language. He defends John Jones and his assertions in Shakespeare At Work. Kermode agrees with Jones that later versions of the plays were mostly revised by clumsier hands than the Bard's, but many of the changes were made by Shakespeare. For example, when censorship laws came into force in 1606 banning profanity on the stage, Shakespeare was forced to remove 52 oaths from Othello. In the process, he decided there were other parts of the text worth altering.
Kermode sees nothing wrong with later revisions of published works and opposes the poetry purists who claim that retouching is sacrilege. He argues, in a review of Zachary Leader's book on the Romantic poets, Revision And Romantic Authorship, that if an author is unhappy with his 'original effusions' and wishes to give them a good paint job, that is his privilege.