Customer Reviews

Zuleika Dobson

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I have to admit that when the Top 100 list came out, I had never heard of this book or it's author. And yet, by itself, the revelation of this satirical baroque masterpiece justifies all the wretched dreck I've waded through on the List.

Zuleika Dobson is the beautiful young granddaughter of the Warden of Judas College at Oxford. She's been earning a living as a conjurer and is the toast of France and America. But Zuleika has never loved a man. She has determined that a woman of her superior beauty can only love a man who is so superior as to be oblivious to her charms. Thus far, there has been no such man.

Immediately on her arrival on campus, the entire student body falls madly in love with her. However, at dinner her first night the young Duke of Dorset seems indifferent. Could he be the man? Alas, it turns out that he too is smitten and when she discovers this she spurns him. Unused to such a dismissal, the Duke decides that he must kill himself & soon the whole College is ready to follow his example.

The book is a shrieking hoot from start to finish & the whole thing is rendered in an ornate prose that is wholly unique. Take this description of the Duke & his troll like flat mate Noaks:

Sensitive reader, start not at the apparition! Oxford is a plexus of anomalies.
These two youths were (odd as it may seem to you) subject to the same Statutes,
affiliated to the same College, reading for the same School; aye! and though the
one had inherited half a score of noble and castellated roofs, whose mere
repairs cost him annually thousands and thousands of pounds, and the other's
people had but one mean little square of lead, from which the fireworks of the
Crystal Palace were clearly visible every Thursday evening, in Oxford one roof
sheltered both of them. Furthermore, there was even some measure of intimacy
between them It was the Duke's whim to condescend further in the direction of
Noaks than in any other. He saw in Noaks his own foil and antithesis, and made
a point of walking up the High with him at least once in every term. Noaks, for
his part, regarded the Duke with feelings mingled of idolatry and disapproval.
The Duke's First in Mods oppressed him (who, by dint of dogged industry, had
scraped a Second) more than all the other differences between them. But the
dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they
will come to a bad end. Noaks may have regarded the Duke as a rather pathetic
figure, on the whole.

Or this passage describing the suicidal yearnings of the student body:

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hindlegs. But by standing a
flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a
gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real
progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him
loose among his fellows, and he is lost--he becomes just a unit in unreason. If
any one of the undergraduates had met Miss Dobson in the desert of Sahara, he
would have fallen in love with her; but not one in a thousand of them would have
wished to die because she did not love him. The Duke's was a peculiar case.
For him to fall in love was itself a violent peripety, bound to produce a
violent upheaval; and such was his pride that for his love to be unrequited
would naturally enamour him of death. these other, these quite ordinary, young
men were the victims less of Zuleika than of the Duke's example, and of one
another. A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units
pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.
It was because these undergraduates were a crowd that their passion for Zuleika
was so intense; and it was because they were a crowd that they followed so
blindly the lead given to them. To die for Miss Dobson was 'the thing to do'.
The Duke was going to do it. The Junta was going to do it. It is a hateful
fact, but we must face the fact, that snobbishness was one of the springs to the
tragedy here chronicled.

I can't recommend this one highly enough.

Beerbohm was a great caricaturist, both in words and illustration, but Zuleika was, sadly, his only novel.

The first time you read it you will weep with laughter at the farcical hilarity of the situations that Beerbohm conjures up and the way that he describes them.

The second time you read it, you will weep be entranced by the beauty of the prose.

The third time you read it, you will realise that you have acquired a true friend in the book, which will live with you forever.

I have purchased countless copies of the book because I keep giving or lending copies to people ... and this is a book that once lent, never returns.

The introduction to this version of the novel contains a quote to the effect that "[Beerbohm] only mocked what he loved." How he must have loved Oxford! This novel's outrageous satire doesn't fail to please from one page to the next, as Beerbohm swerves from one affectation to another in satirizing the Edwardian Dandy, the Modern Woman and anyone who comes between them. Structurally, the book consists of various collisions between caricatures of the sort that made Beerbohm famous: from the Duke of Dorset to Mr. Oover to Noaks to the fateful Zuleika herself, each character charms and delights.

Beerbohm's prose is liquid, self-consciously affected and simply hilarious. It's the kind of prose that can't be recreated in today's literary environment, but the kind that ought to be treasured and brought out often at night, like the Duke's bottles of port.

(If I had one complaint, it would be that the book is a bit too long, and the plot's fanciful consummation is postponed for a few too many superfluous chapters. But that's minor, since the book isn't very long in any case.)

The unerring owls have hooted. The Emperors of Oxford smile in approval. This book is for the ages.

The book is a beautifully written evocation of its time and place as well as well-aimed and astute social satire. That much has often been said. What I find amazing is the prescience of its author regarding the fate of that generation. Those young men were, in fact, soon to die out of a sense of duty, honor and (?misplaced)idealism. Although historians may object, perhaps rightly, it could be said that the reality proved more incredible than the fiction. Beerbohm could not have known the horror the near future would bring or the all of the reasons for it, but did he see the where those youth were heading? Personally I think that the novel was written as a pure farce. The pervasive sense of doom, while presented in an often humorous foreknowledge of the students' deaths is a part of the comic structure of the novel. But there is an poignancy to it. The Duke's struggle between desire to live and love and his perceived duty to die an honorable death; his succumbing at last to tradition (even dying in uniform), is touching. In the hindsight of history it is even more so. Therefore, this book can be read either as a comedy or a tragedy. Beneath the sparkling surface, there are depths.

This is a classic. But, for many of today's readers who were born after the demise of the phonograph, they may find the eccentricity and cliches of this book both awkward and disingenuous.

We have always heard the expression "I would die to be with that `woman.'" This book parlays that statement into a novel as one, then some, then almost all, of the male students of the elite institution of Oxford take this cliched saying to a literal demise.

Satire abounds. At one time the Duke decides to renege on his promise to die for the title character (because she will not marry him), and she audaciously responds that he is a coward and not a man of his word. He is then stuck with the greatest of all decisions: live and be found not to be a man of his word about suicide, or die and be a man of his word.

The dialogue is tightly written. Curt and very different from our 21st century patois, the reading is both fun and sometimes difficult. It is more Shakespearean than not. You can see that this author read, and probably reread, that 16th century author as did most men of his educational and geographical background.

Humor is even directed to the author. At one time the Duke notices that Zuleika may not be well read, but she is well spoken. This amazes him - it adds to her attraction. She explains that she became well spoken as she once sat next to a bright young man named Beerbohm - who apparently in one night made her able to delight even the Oxford-educated man with her repertoire.

If you think discussion about suicide for a woman (whom you have only met within a day) is a boring or ridiculous subject, you may want to stay away from this weird story. If you wish to have some inner visions of the pre-WW I British elite males of Oxford, this book offers you plenty. If you just like reading good prose, this book is much more than adequate.

Zuleika Dobson was published in 1911, a little less than a decade after the Boer War ended. It is a meditation on how beauty and love can mascarade for death: "Yonder, in the Colleges, was the fume and fret of tragedy--Love as Death's decoy, and Youth following her." There is a lot of love in the book, and a big dollop of death, too, and it remains a hilarious read.

The book is a sort of mascarade ball. It was, according to itself, a gift to Clio--the Muse of History--from Zeus, who finally gets to bed her by granting her wish to provide a historian "invisibility, inevitability and psychic penetration, with a flawless memory thrown in" to cover the events thrown into action by a certain Ms. Zuleika Dobson at Judas, College at Oxford.

In the novel several ghosts, including George Sand and Chopin, play minor roles as do several Roman Emperors, who are all forced to suffer the indignities of the elements year-in, year-out, and, as statues, usually make their thoughts known by such actions as sweating. You learn quite a lot about the late 19th century activities on Olympus--given that it is a place less reported on in our times--what it means to be an omniscient voice, are treated to a few lectures and even tantrums by the author, and to beware phrases in French, Latin, and Greek. (Not to worry, there are but a tiny smattering of these.)

That said, it is a very funny book which won't take you too long to read and which foreshadows Flann O'Brien's work as well as other, less interesting, magical realists.

One further note of explanation: Zuleika Dobson was recommended to me as a cautionary tale on the perfect woman. Ms. Dobson was not perfect, unless you mean she was an idea. I think that Mr. Beerbohm--and all men--are far too Aristotilean to be so physically transported by her. That, of course, is part and parcel of the joke.

Zuleika Dobson is one of the Modern Library's "100 Best Novels" and deserves the honor, without doubt.

This is a deliciously absurd book, simultaneously outrageously funny and simply outrageous. It is also a book that could perhaps only have been written when it was, after the end of the Victorian Age but immediately before the horrors of WW I. It is almost impossible to imagine a comedy about a woman who so enchants the students in the colleges of Oxford University that they are inspired to commit suicide en masse appearing after the horrors of the Great War. Only ten years after it appeared, it would have been impossible for it to get published. As it is, it stands as one of the last mementos of the pre-War era.

I've learned the hard way that this is not a novel for everyone. Though it is farce, it is not broad farce. Much of the humor lies in the subtlety of the language and one lacking the ear to appreciate the wit is going to be left rather cold. I personally find this to be one of the more deliciously written novels of the past century. It is also one of the sillier books ever written, and intentionally so. The remarkable thing is that Zuleika herself, whose fault is that she can only fall in love with someone who scarcely notices her and fails to love anyone who in turn loves her, is written as a terribly uninteresting person. She is a stage performer, gaining fame with an amateurish magic act with equipment she stole from a previous admirer, yet she never really charms the reader as she ought. This, of course, makes the manner in which she bewitches all of Oxford even more wonderfully absurd.

Throughout it all Beerbohm plays one delightful game after another. For instance, when someone comments on Zuleika's style of speech, she admits to copying from one Max Beerbohm, beside whom she sat at some dinner. Beerbohm also deals wonderfully with the issue of authorial point of view. Around this time the omniscient narrator was taking quite a beating from critics, so Beerbohm makes himself explicitly omnipresent as the result of an encounter with the muse Clio, who makes him temporarily a disembodied spirit, able to enter any space unhindered and unobserved and able to invade even the thoughts of others.

There really isn't another book quite like ZULEIKA DOBSON. Fans of THREE MEN AND A BOAT might find some resemblance between the two, but even here the resemblance is remote. Best just to read it as what it truly is: one of the most unique comic novels ever written.

There is nothing quite like this satirical novel, anywhere, and so, much as the Seven Wonders, it must be experienced first hand to be appreciated. May it strike you favorably, right between the eyes!

From Zuleika's conjuring tricks and astonishing earrings to her chief suitor's inability to find anyone worthy of joining his elite club, this is the most highly developed bit of British eccentricity going. It is like giving Anthony Trollope too much champagne and asking him to dance the gavotte!

Yes, trust me, there really are people very much like these characters, and yes, there is a point or many points to the story. But even if you believe the people to be hopelessly improbable and the situations well-nigh impossible, it is still a fabulous lark of a book.

Please, suspend your disbelief! Do read it and do NOT take it too seriously, or you will miss the fractured fun of it all. Better yet, have someone skillfully read it aloud to you, as deadpan as possible, and you will find yourself hopelessly doubled over.

Would that Max had done more of them like this. It is priceless! I just wonder how soon it will be till someone names their daughter Zuleika!

ZD is a young lady who has become a celeb on the vaudeville circuit as a magician. Her tricks are stupid but her looks are dazzling. So dazzling that when she visits her Oxford-don Granpapa, all the undergraduates fall in love. But ZD, who wants to love someone, does not want to love someone who loves her. The undergrads vow to throw themselves into the Thames. Will they follow through?--you'll have to read the book to find out!

In ways the novel is more about an elitist-ly promising young Duke and his inner turmoil, turmoil caused by Zuleika's love and not-love and by being the one who inspires the undergrads to make their vow.

There are elements of caricature and farce, as well as tenderness--but the mixture doesn't quite work. It would have worked better if Beerbohm had gone more over-the-top AND tender, and had not smoothed it all with his prose. He brings in ghosts and cognizant statues and his own narrator self (dispatched from Zeus with omniscient powers), and the end, of course.... I think I'm frustrated only because the novel comes close to being a perfect read but fails. (Fails at perfection, what kind of criticism is that?)

This was Beerbohm's first novel, after making his name as a caricaturist (drawing) and funny essayist. There's actually a nice-and-simple story underneath, and for long stretches it is paced admirably; and the characters, though caricatures, are not at all thin. His novel would have been improved if he had focused more on story-telling and structure.

Be prepared for some untranslated Latin and French, some obscure English, some Oxford nuances and philia, some Ancient World allusions, an unpretty American, a bit of Edward Gorey, youth! youth! youth!, and many well-written paragraphs.

If this were anything but a social satire, the argument that the characters are unlikeable would have more merit. However, the tone of the narrator throughout the novel clearly tells the reader that he or she is not to take the characters too much to heart. The intentional bathos of many of the scenes undercuts the dignity and importance of the events and people with which the narrative superficially presents them.

Beerbohm's wit and frequent excursions into the supernatural, (describing events from a statue's perspective and his personal relationship with the historical muse, just to name two instances), allow us to accept the characters as likeable within the make believe framework of their setting - a circumstance that is, I think, at the heart of the satire. Well, ZD herself may not always be likeable since she is so shallow, but that is her nature as a succubus (not literally, but the overt suggestion is there). A great femme fatale, though not a feminist.