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Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

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The Case Against Nuance

By Timothy Noah
Posted Monday, July 20, 1998, at 2:24 PM ET

Dear Marjorie,

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This will have to be fast, and in all likelihood will be my final e-mail for the day, because I'm doing a marathon round of job interviews (from which I'm on break right now), followed by single-parent duty.

I wanted to get back to Howards End (no apostrophe, by the way) and your mother, whose absence from that house in Princeton is so keenly felt. Yes, Howards End should come before A Passage to India, but let's not slight A Passage to India. I think of Forster as the great chronicler of mutual misunderstanding between differing groups of people. These misunderstandings are at their subtlest (upper-class bohemians versus upper-class merchants) in Howards End; slightly less subtle (English versus Italians, and English xenophobes versus English Italia-philes, if that's a word) in A Room With A View and Where Angels Fear To Tread; and not subtle at all (English colonials versus Indians) in A Passage to India. I saw the movie of A Passage to India before reading the book, and thought, Gee, this isn't very subtle--David Lean must've trampled all over Forster's nuance. But then I read the book and found out that the book wasn't terribly nuanced either. Which is fine: Life is often not nuanced, so why should art always be? (Lean's career as a filmmaker provides ample demonstration that you can be unsubtle and still produce great works of art.) Conclusion: A Passage to India is great in its own way, which is different from the quieter pleasures of Howards End.

Your mother's passionate identification with Mrs. Wilcox always baffled me a bit, since Beverly Williams was very learned and had a nice cutting sense of humor (it's where you got yours), while Mrs. Wilcox is self-effacing and ignorant of all but the domestic arts. (Also, at least as played by Vanessa Redgrave in the movie, kind of strange, which your mother was not.) But yes, you're right, your mother's house was an expression of her "passion for small beauties," and I take delight when you indulge a similar passion (for example, by lining our window sill with tomatoes).

All of which is a roundabout way of saying, if Random House wants to put A Passage to India before Howards End, I'm not inclined to squawk.

I reject your comparison of the Marine Corps to the Amish. The Marine Corps does, as Tom Ricks' book demonstrates, embrace a slightly scary "civilians suck" ethos, which can't be good for society as a whole. But it's no theme park. In addition to performing the essential service of defending the nation, it has (as Tom's book demonstrates) done a remarkable job of rehabilitating kids on whom society has given up. Making the Corps concludes that the gap between civilians and the military is scary, but also argues (if I'm reading Tom right) that civilian institutions would be better off if they mimicked the military a bit more. I don't know anybody who thinks mainstream American society would be better if we all mimicked the Amish a bit more.

Hopefully,

Tim

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