Monday, June 29, 2009
Louditude, Bingism, and Silentists (oh, my)
It's been a struggle lately to find anything about which I really want to write. Could be the season, could be the times. The July issue of Poetry Magazine has caused more than a few people I know to let their subscription lapse, and if I bought it (or had not already let my own suscription end last year), my reaction would be similarly offended. As someone recently wrote to me, 'Why, if this is what the poetry world does, do I want anything to do with it? Why do you, Dan?' Today, I just have no idea. I'm tired of trying to counter the claptrap minds. No, that's probably unfair. Let's give them the benefit of the doubt: maybe it isn't their minds at all, but in their wills and hearts they are so desperately afraid of meaning that, like toddlers, they knock over the blocks because construction is frustrating, and because they are so easily amused at the facile de(con)structions they commit. Minor assaults on an impervious object. Swiped peaches. Like all petulant children, they're easily placated but better ignored. Cultural pundits keep telling me how I am, or ought to be, where my feelings and inclinations do or ought to lie; how we all are; keep causing me to return critically into myself and my own tastes and passions, only to find (again) that I can not convince myself to like this or that work, poet, or writer despite their hipness, nor for the sake of winning some callow popularity. As with the futurists (of whom the best we can say is they may not have been fascists), we will look back and ask of most writing today, 'Should I care? Should anyone?' I hope the answer is yes. As of now, I'm not so sure — I am finding it hard to care even in the moment.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Whet You Whistle
* At The New Yorker, James Wood reviews Censoring an Iranian Love Story (well timed, I might add). He writes, 'Censoring an Iranian Love Story is not simply prohibited by censorship but made by it. For Mandanipour, the censor is a kind of co-writer of the book, and he appears often in this novel, under the alias of Porfiry Petrovich (the detective who chases Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov). We see him squabbling with Mandanipour, chatting to another Iranian writer, plotting alternative stories for Dara and Sara, striking out offensive phrases, and finally falling in love with Sara. He is a heavy presence in the novel, and is both creator and critic; the writer is always anticipating the imagination of prohibition even as he tries to outwit it. Even more interesting, the writer, in this situation, becomes his characters; he wants what they want. Their freedom is bound up with his. This interdependency does provocative things to the relation of fiction to reality. On the one hand, fiction becomes more real—real enough to strike lines through. On the other hand, fiction becomes more fictional—multiple writers (the author and his censors) are making up a collective story as they go along, improvising, cutting, editing, bargaining with each other. One of the great successes of this book is how thoroughly it persuades the reader that a novel about censorship could not help also being a novel about fiction-making; and it thus brings a political gravity to a fictive self-consciousness sometimes abused by the more weightless postmodernism.' I have not enjoyed a review by Wood so thoroughly, from its beginning to the very end, for some time.
* In City Journal, Roger Scruton argues that beauty, as a value in itself, has been lost to contemporary culture, and that it necessitates a revival. Like so many City Journal essays I come across, I agree with the basic outline of the author's point but not the clockwork of their argument. In this essay I was perhaps more disappointed than others. Scruton essentially places 'beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form' against the his conception of contemporary 'artistic self-expression' that is necessarily 'a transgression of ordinary moral norms.'
One can make innumerable claims about the relationship between beauty and values — his neo-Victorianism is no more convincing that it was in the 19th Century (unless you were rich, and British) — but to argue that postmodernism itself denies beauty seems, almost immediately, false. This is not to say that some artists do not enact such a purposeful inversion, and that some do it too often or poorly to be effective. Rather, postmodernism was, at its heart, a de-centering of traditional value systems. If Scruton went looking for the 'sensuous form' of Truth, Justice, and the Olde Imperial Way, it is no surprise to learn that postmodern arts disappoint him. To argue that they 'desecrate' beauty by definition is a fool's misapprehension of his own reaction.
Language poets — to call up an iconic postmodern example — can be rightfully accused of eradicating the meaningful constructions of language, but the work often achieved uniquely beautiful arrangements of words as a result; arrangements otherwise impossible without the eradication of meaningful syntax. Scruton desires something far more ethereal than beauty though: he desires that old homogeneity of cultural values. In his love of beauty, Scruton is among the many; in the surreptitious other he's plain out of luck.
* At Slate's economic section, The Big Money, Mark Gimein defends 'Google's extraordinary project of digitizing millions of books' against the 'folks fighting The Coming Google Monopoly.' It is basically a clash not of reasonable possibilities, but of ways of feeling — the fear of control against the hope of universal access. (Aside: Doesn't it always seem as if Slate wants to be antagonistic and contrarian?) In truth, the digitization will likely generate some more mundane and predictable reality. Given free near-universal access to a sort of Babylonian Library, most people will continue to be woeful dunces picking theirnoses way through a Super Duper WalMart. Utopia remains no place. On the other hand, if Google ratchets up prices and strong-arms authors and publishers, then the world remains as it is now, most people have no access to obscure books and people have to visit bookstores (assuming there are any left) or, more likely, that other unjolly giant, Amazon, to get what they want. Status quo.
* In City Journal, Roger Scruton argues that beauty, as a value in itself, has been lost to contemporary culture, and that it necessitates a revival. Like so many City Journal essays I come across, I agree with the basic outline of the author's point but not the clockwork of their argument. In this essay I was perhaps more disappointed than others. Scruton essentially places 'beauty as a way in which lasting moral and spiritual values acquire sensuous form' against the his conception of contemporary 'artistic self-expression' that is necessarily 'a transgression of ordinary moral norms.'
One can make innumerable claims about the relationship between beauty and values — his neo-Victorianism is no more convincing that it was in the 19th Century (unless you were rich, and British) — but to argue that postmodernism itself denies beauty seems, almost immediately, false. This is not to say that some artists do not enact such a purposeful inversion, and that some do it too often or poorly to be effective. Rather, postmodernism was, at its heart, a de-centering of traditional value systems. If Scruton went looking for the 'sensuous form' of Truth, Justice, and the Olde Imperial Way, it is no surprise to learn that postmodern arts disappoint him. To argue that they 'desecrate' beauty by definition is a fool's misapprehension of his own reaction.
Language poets — to call up an iconic postmodern example — can be rightfully accused of eradicating the meaningful constructions of language, but the work often achieved uniquely beautiful arrangements of words as a result; arrangements otherwise impossible without the eradication of meaningful syntax. Scruton desires something far more ethereal than beauty though: he desires that old homogeneity of cultural values. In his love of beauty, Scruton is among the many; in the surreptitious other he's plain out of luck.
* At Slate's economic section, The Big Money, Mark Gimein defends 'Google's extraordinary project of digitizing millions of books' against the 'folks fighting The Coming Google Monopoly.' It is basically a clash not of reasonable possibilities, but of ways of feeling — the fear of control against the hope of universal access. (Aside: Doesn't it always seem as if Slate wants to be antagonistic and contrarian?) In truth, the digitization will likely generate some more mundane and predictable reality. Given free near-universal access to a sort of Babylonian Library, most people will continue to be woeful dunces picking their
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Is there no "Latin American" literature?
Scott at Conversational Reading poses a really interesting question, raised by Letras Libres, 'why has it become so difficult to draw a more or less accurate map of recent Latin American fiction? And how can we, or how should we, interpret this difficulty?' Or, as Scott rephrases it, is Latin American fiction 'too fragmented to be considered as a whole?'
This is retracing a particularly modern issue. There is a way in which Modernism, with its border-crossing influences and allusions, and its ex-pat communities, defied the notion of a 'national literature' that so consumed (and was mostly constructed under) the imperialist-nationalist movement of the previous two centuries. As Edward Said so cogently illuminated in the 1970s, the third world was and is still very much conceptualized in broad ethnic terms derived from the imperial period: the Orient, the Middle-East, Africa, and Latin America.
The questions raised here is very likely the beginning of a challenge to that orthodoxy. The benefits are obvious of such a reconsideration, even ignoring the socio-political, are obvious. We can begin to connect Spanish-language authors and texts more readily across the boundaries of their language, and begin to see the individual works less as part of a larger tapestry and more in their own light, their own schools. Every Spanish-language author is not a new Borges or Marquez; their are other schools, groups, trends within which authors can be contextualized. (A discrediting of the absurd marketing-moniker 'ethnic literature' would be of enormous benefit to American readers.)
Difficulties remain, of course, and that key paradox: that without imperialism, there would be no 'Latin American' literature. The tie that binds these authors together is linguistic as well as historical: all of them come from a land or people re-imagined by Spain's imperial mechanism. It's a similar problem, or challenge, to that which Joyce had, writing as he did in English.
I'm interested to hear some more thoughts on this, from those more informed than I.
This is retracing a particularly modern issue. There is a way in which Modernism, with its border-crossing influences and allusions, and its ex-pat communities, defied the notion of a 'national literature' that so consumed (and was mostly constructed under) the imperialist-nationalist movement of the previous two centuries. As Edward Said so cogently illuminated in the 1970s, the third world was and is still very much conceptualized in broad ethnic terms derived from the imperial period: the Orient, the Middle-East, Africa, and Latin America.
The questions raised here is very likely the beginning of a challenge to that orthodoxy. The benefits are obvious of such a reconsideration, even ignoring the socio-political, are obvious. We can begin to connect Spanish-language authors and texts more readily across the boundaries of their language, and begin to see the individual works less as part of a larger tapestry and more in their own light, their own schools. Every Spanish-language author is not a new Borges or Marquez; their are other schools, groups, trends within which authors can be contextualized. (A discrediting of the absurd marketing-moniker 'ethnic literature' would be of enormous benefit to American readers.)
Difficulties remain, of course, and that key paradox: that without imperialism, there would be no 'Latin American' literature. The tie that binds these authors together is linguistic as well as historical: all of them come from a land or people re-imagined by Spain's imperial mechanism. It's a similar problem, or challenge, to that which Joyce had, writing as he did in English.
I'm interested to hear some more thoughts on this, from those more informed than I.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Re-Reading Holden
'He's so self-indulgent,' TBG shouts from the couch across the room, laptop cradled on her knees. Holden Caufield annoys her to no end. Despite the life-altering effect that Salinger's Nine Stories had on her as a teenager, thrusting her into a lifetime of painful and pointless humanities degrees (kidding), TBG never warmed to the peculiar progenitor of unhinged teenage angst.
The New York Times this weekend reports that she is not alone, 'Teachers say young readers just don’t like Holden as much as they used to. What once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many of them as "weird," "whiny" and "immature." The alienated teenager has lost much of his novelty, said Ariel Levenson, an English teacher at the Dalton School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Holden’s home turf. She added that even the students who liked the book tend to find the language — "phony," "her hands were lousy with rocks," the relentless "goddams" — grating and dated.'
These kids today are pretty perceptive, because the language of the book is goddam dated. That's not much of a detraction — Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a period piece, a product of and reflection on a particular time. But the language shouldn't be a sticking point because it's nothing new for High School students. There are plenty of books read over four years of English classes that will seem old-fashioned and dated. Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville: the whole canon gang is a pretty tough slog.
The real problem isn't 'kids today'. The problem is with the way this book is taught. To wit: '"Holden Caulfield is supposed to be this paradigmatic teenager we can all relate to, but we don’t really speak this way or talk about these things," Ms. Levenson said, summarizing a typical response.' Holden may be many things to many people (a great compelling character, for example) but 'paradigmatic teenager' is not one of them.
How many kids go to (& get kicked out of) fancy boarding schools? How many are borderline psychotic? How many see through the 'phoniness' of the adult world? How many come from a wealthy family in New York City? Now find one teenager who encapsulates all of these. I tell you there's one, just one: Holden Caufield. And thank God for the one, and thank goodness there is just one.
Students need to be properly introduced to this book: it's a powerfully-written novel with a compelling, neurotic teenage character, written about a particular time, place, and social stratosphere of America. Holden is not the archetypal figure of American adolescence, and to propose that to a group of students today is foolish. They won't buy it, even if only out of rebelliousness, but mostly out of the good sense that their parents' generation seems to have lacked — the 1960s generation who 'saw themselves in the disaffected preppy.'
Cultural critic Morris Dickstein is quoted in the article, 'The skepticism, the belief in the purity of the soul against the tawdry, trashy culture plays very well in the counterculture and post-counterculture generation . . . I wouldn’t say we have a more gullible youth culture, but it may be more of a joining or togetherness culture.'
This is the standard reading. To better understand the reactions of young people, I offer an alternative. That vaunted skepticism reads, easily, as anti-intellectual adolescent solipsism (a form of Joyce's Stephen Dedalus). How are young people still expected to disdain 'tawdry, trashy culture' after thirty years of postmodernism has vindicated it in the face of perceived snobbery by the very people who worshiped Holden? And that word, gullible, is a tough one to swallow when most of those students had to teach their parents how to use a computer and watched the world fall apart on their parent's watch.
Young people have had enough of Holden. All things considered, maybe it's for the best.
The New York Times this weekend reports that she is not alone, 'Teachers say young readers just don’t like Holden as much as they used to. What once seemed like courageous truth-telling now strikes many of them as "weird," "whiny" and "immature." The alienated teenager has lost much of his novelty, said Ariel Levenson, an English teacher at the Dalton School on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Holden’s home turf. She added that even the students who liked the book tend to find the language — "phony," "her hands were lousy with rocks," the relentless "goddams" — grating and dated.'
These kids today are pretty perceptive, because the language of the book is goddam dated. That's not much of a detraction — Salinger's Catcher in the Rye is a period piece, a product of and reflection on a particular time. But the language shouldn't be a sticking point because it's nothing new for High School students. There are plenty of books read over four years of English classes that will seem old-fashioned and dated. Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville: the whole canon gang is a pretty tough slog.
The real problem isn't 'kids today'. The problem is with the way this book is taught. To wit: '"Holden Caulfield is supposed to be this paradigmatic teenager we can all relate to, but we don’t really speak this way or talk about these things," Ms. Levenson said, summarizing a typical response.' Holden may be many things to many people (a great compelling character, for example) but 'paradigmatic teenager' is not one of them.
How many kids go to (& get kicked out of) fancy boarding schools? How many are borderline psychotic? How many see through the 'phoniness' of the adult world? How many come from a wealthy family in New York City? Now find one teenager who encapsulates all of these. I tell you there's one, just one: Holden Caufield. And thank God for the one, and thank goodness there is just one.
Students need to be properly introduced to this book: it's a powerfully-written novel with a compelling, neurotic teenage character, written about a particular time, place, and social stratosphere of America. Holden is not the archetypal figure of American adolescence, and to propose that to a group of students today is foolish. They won't buy it, even if only out of rebelliousness, but mostly out of the good sense that their parents' generation seems to have lacked — the 1960s generation who 'saw themselves in the disaffected preppy.'
Cultural critic Morris Dickstein is quoted in the article, 'The skepticism, the belief in the purity of the soul against the tawdry, trashy culture plays very well in the counterculture and post-counterculture generation . . . I wouldn’t say we have a more gullible youth culture, but it may be more of a joining or togetherness culture.'
This is the standard reading. To better understand the reactions of young people, I offer an alternative. That vaunted skepticism reads, easily, as anti-intellectual adolescent solipsism (a form of Joyce's Stephen Dedalus). How are young people still expected to disdain 'tawdry, trashy culture' after thirty years of postmodernism has vindicated it in the face of perceived snobbery by the very people who worshiped Holden? And that word, gullible, is a tough one to swallow when most of those students had to teach their parents how to use a computer and watched the world fall apart on their parent's watch.
Young people have had enough of Holden. All things considered, maybe it's for the best.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Outed
The Los Angeles Times has a rather funny little article on 'The Truth About Writers', in which all writers, everywhere, in all time periods, are all outed in one fell swoop. It's a big secret, a mystery that produces mystique — unless you've read Hemingway's A Movable Feast. 'We don't spend much time writing,' J. Robert Lennon writes. 'There. It's out. Writers, by and large, do not do a great deal of writing. We may devote a large number of hours per day to writing, yes, but very little of that time is spent typing the words of a poem, essay or story into a computer or scribbling them onto a piece of paper.'
'The truth, of course,' Lennon writes, 'is that writers are always working. When you ask a writer a direct question, and he smiles and nods and then says "Well!" and turns and walks away without saying goodbye, he is actually working. If a writer is giving you a ride to the bus station and pulls up in front of the supermarket and turns to you and says, "Enjoy your trip!," she is actually working.'
This whole piece is a bit of an insider's joke — or rather, it's plays on the idea of letting readers in on the secret society of 'narcissists and social misfits.' Writers desperately need mystique. Half of Salinger's appeal today is his solitude and antisocial behavior. Ginsberg's was being the holy man of hippies and beatniks; Lowell's was being the wild literary blue-blood; Dylan Thomas was the bohemian enfant terrible and Bukowski was the audience-berating slob. All of them were far more like people and less like caricatures.
It's a type of fame and notoriety of which I'm not particularly fond. That being said, much of what Lennon writes is dead on. I do most of my 'writing' while riding the T in the morning and at night, thinking while I read (sometimes more thinking than reading, causing several outrageous late fees from the library) and jotting little notes. It isn't distraction though that makes a writer, or even the act of trying to write — what's necessary t be a writer is sustained attention to a phrase, a scene, an idea, or character. Not narcissism. Just a hint of obsession.
'The truth, of course,' Lennon writes, 'is that writers are always working. When you ask a writer a direct question, and he smiles and nods and then says "Well!" and turns and walks away without saying goodbye, he is actually working. If a writer is giving you a ride to the bus station and pulls up in front of the supermarket and turns to you and says, "Enjoy your trip!," she is actually working.'
This whole piece is a bit of an insider's joke — or rather, it's plays on the idea of letting readers in on the secret society of 'narcissists and social misfits.' Writers desperately need mystique. Half of Salinger's appeal today is his solitude and antisocial behavior. Ginsberg's was being the holy man of hippies and beatniks; Lowell's was being the wild literary blue-blood; Dylan Thomas was the bohemian enfant terrible and Bukowski was the audience-berating slob. All of them were far more like people and less like caricatures.
It's a type of fame and notoriety of which I'm not particularly fond. That being said, much of what Lennon writes is dead on. I do most of my 'writing' while riding the T in the morning and at night, thinking while I read (sometimes more thinking than reading, causing several outrageous late fees from the library) and jotting little notes. It isn't distraction though that makes a writer, or even the act of trying to write — what's necessary t be a writer is sustained attention to a phrase, a scene, an idea, or character. Not narcissism. Just a hint of obsession.
Friday, June 19, 2009
A Note on Projective Verse
Olson has long puzzled me. His ideas seem simple, and his poetry enthusiastic but limited. Or, maybe not Olson himself, but his reputation and continued adoration, and the way people constantly refer to Projective Verse. In this famous manifesto, for those of you who don't know, Olson calls for a turn away from the traditional line and certainly from forms, and for a renewed emphasis on the poet's natural breath. Well, fine. Hardly earth-shattering ideas. One wonders, why the contemporary focus on Olson when Williams and Pound were doing this (far better than he or his disciples ever did) already? Perhaps because his language seems so technical and somewhat frenzied.
In the course of his essay, while defending the 'syllable' as the basic unit of poetry, Olson writes, 'For from the root out, from all over the place, the syllable comes, the figures of, the dance: "Is" comes from the Aryan root, as, to breathe. The English "not" equals the Sanskrit na, which may come from the root na, to be lost, to perish. "Be" is from bhu, to grow.'
One of the basic ways that I judge a piece of criticism or, in this case, an aesthetic philosophical system, is by the integrity of its buttresses. No system holds up under scrutiny if the constituent elements or arguments are weak. That being said, I admit now that I only have a basic knowledge of linguistics, from my study of Irish, and speak with little expertise. However, from what little I do know, I think that this analysis of the roots of English words is, to put it mildly, wrong. Not wrong in the sense that Indo-European languages do not share markedly common roots, but the idea that elements of English have actually descended from these other languages, as opposed to having had a parallel development.
One can see the path which led Olson to his belief about syllables, through these mistaken linguistic analyses. How was this missed? Or has it not been missed? Or maybe I am just incorrect in my criticism, but I think not. It seems, in retrospect, of a case in which one energetic person with borrowed insights put forth one set of opinions on poetry as if they were universal; and then some subset bought into it.
I have another deeply-held disagreement with Olson in his essay as well, in regards to several of his assertions about past poets and the concept of breath. He several times calls upon Milton as an example of having no breath, of being flawed — or of being the heart of all flaws in the poetic line. There is no point in arguing with a figure as long-dead as Olson, but I just can not agree with that assertion, in any sense. His work ranged from ragged, difficult, jarring meters to stanzas of prosaic speech and argument; he was obviously well-aware of the breath of the line and the effect breaking or stretching it has on a reader. It is all over his work.
In the course of his essay, while defending the 'syllable' as the basic unit of poetry, Olson writes, 'For from the root out, from all over the place, the syllable comes, the figures of, the dance: "Is" comes from the Aryan root, as, to breathe. The English "not" equals the Sanskrit na, which may come from the root na, to be lost, to perish. "Be" is from bhu, to grow.'
One of the basic ways that I judge a piece of criticism or, in this case, an aesthetic philosophical system, is by the integrity of its buttresses. No system holds up under scrutiny if the constituent elements or arguments are weak. That being said, I admit now that I only have a basic knowledge of linguistics, from my study of Irish, and speak with little expertise. However, from what little I do know, I think that this analysis of the roots of English words is, to put it mildly, wrong. Not wrong in the sense that Indo-European languages do not share markedly common roots, but the idea that elements of English have actually descended from these other languages, as opposed to having had a parallel development.
One can see the path which led Olson to his belief about syllables, through these mistaken linguistic analyses. How was this missed? Or has it not been missed? Or maybe I am just incorrect in my criticism, but I think not. It seems, in retrospect, of a case in which one energetic person with borrowed insights put forth one set of opinions on poetry as if they were universal; and then some subset bought into it.
I have another deeply-held disagreement with Olson in his essay as well, in regards to several of his assertions about past poets and the concept of breath. He several times calls upon Milton as an example of having no breath, of being flawed — or of being the heart of all flaws in the poetic line. There is no point in arguing with a figure as long-dead as Olson, but I just can not agree with that assertion, in any sense. His work ranged from ragged, difficult, jarring meters to stanzas of prosaic speech and argument; he was obviously well-aware of the breath of the line and the effect breaking or stretching it has on a reader. It is all over his work.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Cause or the Symptom
In an article today at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum discusses whether Anne Hathaway will emphasize the bawdy pun in one of Shakespeare's lines from Twelfth Night in her upcoming Central Park production of the play. For those interested in line breaks and the art of reading verse aloud, Ron's piece makes a strong case for one particular style — but that isn't what caught my attention here. In the course of gearing up for his argument, he writes, '[Barry Edelstein's] book Thinking Shakespeare is so far superior to anything that has emerged recently from academia that it confirmed my feeling that directors — at least certain gifted directors: Edelstein, Brian Kulick, and Edward Hall, for instance, the younger generation — are much better scholars of Shakespeare, much more able to find the spectacular treasures buried in each pentameter line, than most current, grim, theory-shackled academics.'
It's that last bit that interests me: 'the younger generation — are much better scholars of Shakespeare, much more able to find the spectacular treasures buried in each pentameter line, than most current, grim, theory-shackled academics.' I think Rosenbaum, when he says scholars, actually means 'readers', or at least I take him to mean that. Scholars, to my mind, and scholarly work, are by nature archival and research-based rather than aesthetic or formally critical; and when a theorist works they do a 'reading'. Edelstein then is a critic of performance, of the aesthetic power that, in this case, a very slight pause in speech at the end of Shakespeare's lines can create for viewers (and to some extent, readers).
The dichotomy, presented here in an off-the-cuff common knowledge manner, is of 'young aesthetes' versus 'old theorists' — one set reading for effect and beauty, the other reading for deep hidden meanings, implications, and / or contradictions. And couched in the description 'current, grim, theory-shackled,' it all rings true. Of course, it isn't. There are plenty of young theorists, some of them quite astute; TBG received her MA in Literary Theory last year, in fact. (She's even one of the stute.)
What strikes me as being accurate in Ron's asserted dichotomy is the descriptions of young and old. Those ensconced (tenured) in academia are settled, in control, and self-serious; in many cases 'theory-shackled' aptly describes the work if not the people. Young critics are clawing their way into positions, even adjunct positions, with theory as one of many tools in their critical arsenal; they often find less traditional posts that are adjacent to academia (such as, say, theater directors). It requires them to be flexible and practical in order to thrive, or just survive.
Equally implied by Ron, I think, is the idea that theory is the cause of this older academic lead-mindedness. That theory is the disease plaguing academia. But what if, alternatively, the attraction to theory's strict formulas is itself a symptom? Is it then a generational divide, more than one of academic leanings? I am certainly more skeptical of theory as the 'answer', or even as any kind of 'development' as evangelists like Stanley Fish might argue ('Obviously the rationalist Enlightenment agenda does not survive this deconstructive analysis intact'); theory gives us an entirely different set of tools. This is not to say I'm not equally aware of the implications of purely formal readings, one just has to balance them. If the older set seems more settled or stolid, as Ron describes them, maybe it is because they are — they're righteous, sure, and worshipful in and of literary theory (or against it) in a way that I can not be, should not be.
It's that last bit that interests me: 'the younger generation — are much better scholars of Shakespeare, much more able to find the spectacular treasures buried in each pentameter line, than most current, grim, theory-shackled academics.' I think Rosenbaum, when he says scholars, actually means 'readers', or at least I take him to mean that. Scholars, to my mind, and scholarly work, are by nature archival and research-based rather than aesthetic or formally critical; and when a theorist works they do a 'reading'. Edelstein then is a critic of performance, of the aesthetic power that, in this case, a very slight pause in speech at the end of Shakespeare's lines can create for viewers (and to some extent, readers).
The dichotomy, presented here in an off-the-cuff common knowledge manner, is of 'young aesthetes' versus 'old theorists' — one set reading for effect and beauty, the other reading for deep hidden meanings, implications, and / or contradictions. And couched in the description 'current, grim, theory-shackled,' it all rings true. Of course, it isn't. There are plenty of young theorists, some of them quite astute; TBG received her MA in Literary Theory last year, in fact. (She's even one of the stute.)
What strikes me as being accurate in Ron's asserted dichotomy is the descriptions of young and old. Those ensconced (tenured) in academia are settled, in control, and self-serious; in many cases 'theory-shackled' aptly describes the work if not the people. Young critics are clawing their way into positions, even adjunct positions, with theory as one of many tools in their critical arsenal; they often find less traditional posts that are adjacent to academia (such as, say, theater directors). It requires them to be flexible and practical in order to thrive, or just survive.
Equally implied by Ron, I think, is the idea that theory is the cause of this older academic lead-mindedness. That theory is the disease plaguing academia. But what if, alternatively, the attraction to theory's strict formulas is itself a symptom? Is it then a generational divide, more than one of academic leanings? I am certainly more skeptical of theory as the 'answer', or even as any kind of 'development' as evangelists like Stanley Fish might argue ('Obviously the rationalist Enlightenment agenda does not survive this deconstructive analysis intact'); theory gives us an entirely different set of tools. This is not to say I'm not equally aware of the implications of purely formal readings, one just has to balance them. If the older set seems more settled or stolid, as Ron describes them, maybe it is because they are — they're righteous, sure, and worshipful in and of literary theory (or against it) in a way that I can not be, should not be.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Days Gone By
Remember, way back (the 1990's), when Dave Eggers was looked upon with hope and possibility, as a young but witty and talented tragicomic memoirist? It seems like such a long time ago now. So many roads have been traveled. The dotcom bubble burst. 9/11 happened, and I guess kind of still is. The hipsters beat down irony worse than Rodney King. Thinking back on my first reading of Heartbreaking Work is like visiting America's first McDonalds — the admirable mom and pop hamburger joint, franchised to the point of the grotesque; not unlike Eggers' trademark brand of smugly adolescent criticomedy. Actually, yeah: it's the McSweeney's brand. They could even use a 'golden smirk' instead of golden arches.
At The New Republic, David Orr reviews the new film written by Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida, Away We Go. I don't mean to just go on and on, but this came to mind when I read the review; all that hope and then, gradually, the exasperation that replaced it. Orr writes, 'leads Rudolph and Krasinski are eminently likable, despite the preciousness and self-satisfaction with which the script often saddles them. You may very well enjoy Away We Go more than I did. But rest assured that you will never love this movie as much as it loves itself.'
* LA Weekly has a good interview with James Wood (thanks to Mark Sarvas for the link). Nathan Ihara writes of Wood, 'When he finds a novel lacking, he is rigorous in charting its stylistic and philosophical failings. Some of the most acclaimed contemporary authors have felt the sting of Wood’s disquiet, and yet he never stoops to the petty indignation of a critic like B.R. Myers (A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose), the bazooka tactics of the novelist and critic Dale Peck, or the heedless verdicts of The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani. Wood’s naysayers categorize his aesthetics as narrow and polemical (fancy talk for “not the same as mine”), yet his criticism clearly rises from a deep passion, an intellect fueled by soulfulness, curiosity and hope. He is so easy to attack precisely because he offers so much to consider.' It is a good long piece, and I recommend it for lovers, haters, and indifferents.
And I give you this:
* Thanks to Scott at Conversational Reading for bringing The Point to my attention. As Scott describes it, 'The Point seems to aspire to be a sort of n + 1 for those of us who have grown impatient with Keith Gessen and Benjamin Kunkel. That is to say it's a mixture of literary and cultural criticism, written in a learned but far from academic prose.' Sounds similar to The Critical Flame, whose next issue is set to go live in early July. I should start setting a date for these things. I tend to think n + 1 is to McSweeneys as Burger King is to McDonalds.
At The New Republic, David Orr reviews the new film written by Eggers and his wife Vendela Vida, Away We Go. I don't mean to just go on and on, but this came to mind when I read the review; all that hope and then, gradually, the exasperation that replaced it. Orr writes, 'leads Rudolph and Krasinski are eminently likable, despite the preciousness and self-satisfaction with which the script often saddles them. You may very well enjoy Away We Go more than I did. But rest assured that you will never love this movie as much as it loves itself.'
* LA Weekly has a good interview with James Wood (thanks to Mark Sarvas for the link). Nathan Ihara writes of Wood, 'When he finds a novel lacking, he is rigorous in charting its stylistic and philosophical failings. Some of the most acclaimed contemporary authors have felt the sting of Wood’s disquiet, and yet he never stoops to the petty indignation of a critic like B.R. Myers (A Reader’s Manifesto: An Attack on the Growing Pretentiousness in American Literary Prose), the bazooka tactics of the novelist and critic Dale Peck, or the heedless verdicts of The New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani. Wood’s naysayers categorize his aesthetics as narrow and polemical (fancy talk for “not the same as mine”), yet his criticism clearly rises from a deep passion, an intellect fueled by soulfulness, curiosity and hope. He is so easy to attack precisely because he offers so much to consider.' It is a good long piece, and I recommend it for lovers, haters, and indifferents.
And I give you this:
* Thanks to Scott at Conversational Reading for bringing The Point to my attention. As Scott describes it, 'The Point seems to aspire to be a sort of n + 1 for those of us who have grown impatient with Keith Gessen and Benjamin Kunkel. That is to say it's a mixture of literary and cultural criticism, written in a learned but far from academic prose.' Sounds similar to The Critical Flame, whose next issue is set to go live in early July. I should start setting a date for these things. I tend to think n + 1 is to McSweeneys as Burger King is to McDonalds.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
status update: breaking news from Iran
CNN just noticed that Iran also has the internet and that (thankfully) their government has no idea what a firewall is — that leaves the people most supportive of democratic revolution (the young and urban) with the strongest (perhaps the only) international voice. 'While officials would not say whether they were communicating with Iranians directly, one senior official noted that the United States is learning about certain people being picked up for questioning by authorities through posts on Twitter. . . . senior officials say the State Department asked Twitter to refrain for going down for periodic scheduled maintenance at this critical time to ensure the site continues to operate.'
This is the type of democratic power-shift that made the internet such a promising tool for positive change in the world. The Iranian community has become truly global, not just a dispersed diasporic and disconnected people — information is passed immediately from Tehran to London and Washington, between family members and friends into the public sphere. While only third and second-hand reports reach us through most of the mainstream news organs, you can check the Iran Facebook page for updates on the post-election protests, video, interviews, photographs, and links news stories and commentary. Amazing.
This is the type of democratic power-shift that made the internet such a promising tool for positive change in the world. The Iranian community has become truly global, not just a dispersed diasporic and disconnected people — information is passed immediately from Tehran to London and Washington, between family members and friends into the public sphere. While only third and second-hand reports reach us through most of the mainstream news organs, you can check the Iran Facebook page for updates on the post-election protests, video, interviews, photographs, and links news stories and commentary. Amazing.
Happy Bloomsday!
Monday, June 15, 2009
Bloom at the AV Club
In a bit of sweet irony, as book review sections fail intellectually and monetarily, the Onion's arts and letters section The AV Club has an interview with canonical mainstay Harold Bloom, to discuss Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. If the Boston Globe book section had more material like this, I'd be apt to get a subscription. Thus, I cede the floor to Bloom, 'The first time I read Blood Meridian, I was so appalled that while I was held, I gave up after about 60 pages. I don’t think I was feeling very well then anyway; my health was going through a bad time, and it was more than I could take. But it intrigued me, because there was no question about the quality of the writing, which is stunning. So I went back a second time, and I got, I don’t remember… 140, 150 pages, and then, I think it was the Judge who got me. He was beginning to give me nightmares just as he gives the kid nightmares. And then the third time, it went off like a shot. I went straight through it and was exhilarated. I said, "My God! This reminds me of Thomas Pynchon at his best, or Nathanael West." It was the greatest single book since Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. In fact, I taught it for several years in a class I gave here at Yale — interestingly enough, in a sequence starting with Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, moving on to Miss Lonelyhearts, then The Crying of Lot 49, and the fourth in the sequence was Blood Meridian.'
Friday, June 12, 2009
The Wool
Every time I delve into anything political here, I'm lambasted and painted as another bookish poet with few well-constructed ideas about politics and government (these pop psychologists vilify me as a crazy liberal or a Victorian conservative in equal measure). I find it mostly funny, because many who know me beyond this site might say exactly the opposite — that I'm not particularly bookish and that I hold strong, complex political beliefs. My interests as a younger man were mainly philosophical and political: I was a History major before switching to Philosophy, and then eventually to a double major in Philosophy and English. I was active in a few campus campaigns, but found the neo-hippie pedantic liberal crowd as interminably adolescent as I did the quasi-fascist purblind conservatives. We were all young though and everyone seemed to fit neatly into a sad, limited stereotype (I fashioned myself a passable Good Will Hunting facade).
So with some understanding of the Tojan gates I am opening up for (im)personal attacks, I begin today looking at a New York Times op/ed by Paul Krugman that is currently making the rounds with people I know. In the essay, Krugman points out the recent rise of conservative extremism, and the extremist nature of supposedly mainstream conservative media outlets such as Fox News and The Washington Times — 'that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.' He connects the rhetoric of that extremism to the recent Holocaust memorial shooting and the death of the abortionist Dr. Tiller. Quoting from such a short piece seems ineffective so I ask you to read it, however repugnant you may find the ideas, before moving forward.
It seems to me that there is a serious divide in modern American conservatism, one that is very likely un-mendable. On one hand there is a type of Conservative in America whose philosophy on government actually resembles the classical liberal stance of the late colonial era. They draw from Paine and others to assert that the key foundation for democratic freedom is individual freedom from any government intervention that is not completely necessary. (I think Reagan was such a conservative, also G.H.W. Bush.) Their major concerns are the extent of government: of stern law enforcement within the framework of a limited set of laws; the freedom and protection of property ownership, a flat tax, cutting welfare to the bare minimum (if any); and generally the easing of government regulations.
On the other hand, there seems to also be a type of 'conservative' that I'll call 'Republican' instead for the sake of clarity. (One could reverse the titles, they are only monikers.) Republicans hold that the state is fully co-existent with the moral framework of the 'national culture' and the ethical/moral standards set forth by a subset of fundamental mostly Christian religions. Economics are usually a concern that remains wholly secondary to morality. The government is expected to expand its power as much as necessary to uphold the moral framework, no matter what the issue or cause, no matter the legality. Importantly, any concept of 'freedom-from' (if even existent) is completely overwritten whenever a moral issues is in question (the issues often surrounding homosexuals is a good case in point).
These are each stereotyped versions of the two groups, and too broad to be fully applicable to any real person except in the most extreme cases; but the caricatures emphasize what are actually two different views on politics and the role of government that both exist in the modern Republican party. They certainly overlap — often in the area of law enforcement, military, and immigration — but probably ought not to co-exist under a single banner. The Conservative I find reasonable, despite that I disagree with them; in the Republican though there is an element of unreason, taking the form of impenetrable religious truth.
Anyhow, I think the distinction is important in terms of the Krugman article, as American terrorists have been drawn from both camps but are not necessarily contiguous. I agree with most of his points, if not the tone he takes in presenting them — one ought to acknowledge the similar historical cloud surrounding liberalism from the 1930s through the mid-1970s (explicated by Anne Applebaum in The New Republic). But generally, yes: the legitimizers of outlandish conspiracy theories all carry a small stain of responsibility for recent acts of violence and terrorism in the United States.
Reasonable discourse and measured rhetoric must be the standards by which we judge the legitimacy of a public intellectual, on any side of the debate. What may seem an obviously outlandish claim about the federal government's 'fascist policies', when asserted with authority to the vast public, too quickly blossoms into an act of mass murder. When a dirty, knotted-hair, hemp-sporting crazy on the roadside screams about government fascism, he is shunned and ignored; the same man well-groomed in a Brooks Brothers suit on television screaming the same ideas has all the authority of network sponsorship.
So with some understanding of the Tojan gates I am opening up for (im)personal attacks, I begin today looking at a New York Times op/ed by Paul Krugman that is currently making the rounds with people I know. In the essay, Krugman points out the recent rise of conservative extremism, and the extremist nature of supposedly mainstream conservative media outlets such as Fox News and The Washington Times — 'that supposedly respectable news organizations and political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.' He connects the rhetoric of that extremism to the recent Holocaust memorial shooting and the death of the abortionist Dr. Tiller. Quoting from such a short piece seems ineffective so I ask you to read it, however repugnant you may find the ideas, before moving forward.
It seems to me that there is a serious divide in modern American conservatism, one that is very likely un-mendable. On one hand there is a type of Conservative in America whose philosophy on government actually resembles the classical liberal stance of the late colonial era. They draw from Paine and others to assert that the key foundation for democratic freedom is individual freedom from any government intervention that is not completely necessary. (I think Reagan was such a conservative, also G.H.W. Bush.) Their major concerns are the extent of government: of stern law enforcement within the framework of a limited set of laws; the freedom and protection of property ownership, a flat tax, cutting welfare to the bare minimum (if any); and generally the easing of government regulations.
On the other hand, there seems to also be a type of 'conservative' that I'll call 'Republican' instead for the sake of clarity. (One could reverse the titles, they are only monikers.) Republicans hold that the state is fully co-existent with the moral framework of the 'national culture' and the ethical/moral standards set forth by a subset of fundamental mostly Christian religions. Economics are usually a concern that remains wholly secondary to morality. The government is expected to expand its power as much as necessary to uphold the moral framework, no matter what the issue or cause, no matter the legality. Importantly, any concept of 'freedom-from' (if even existent) is completely overwritten whenever a moral issues is in question (the issues often surrounding homosexuals is a good case in point).
These are each stereotyped versions of the two groups, and too broad to be fully applicable to any real person except in the most extreme cases; but the caricatures emphasize what are actually two different views on politics and the role of government that both exist in the modern Republican party. They certainly overlap — often in the area of law enforcement, military, and immigration — but probably ought not to co-exist under a single banner. The Conservative I find reasonable, despite that I disagree with them; in the Republican though there is an element of unreason, taking the form of impenetrable religious truth.
Anyhow, I think the distinction is important in terms of the Krugman article, as American terrorists have been drawn from both camps but are not necessarily contiguous. I agree with most of his points, if not the tone he takes in presenting them — one ought to acknowledge the similar historical cloud surrounding liberalism from the 1930s through the mid-1970s (explicated by Anne Applebaum in The New Republic). But generally, yes: the legitimizers of outlandish conspiracy theories all carry a small stain of responsibility for recent acts of violence and terrorism in the United States.
Reasonable discourse and measured rhetoric must be the standards by which we judge the legitimacy of a public intellectual, on any side of the debate. What may seem an obviously outlandish claim about the federal government's 'fascist policies', when asserted with authority to the vast public, too quickly blossoms into an act of mass murder. When a dirty, knotted-hair, hemp-sporting crazy on the roadside screams about government fascism, he is shunned and ignored; the same man well-groomed in a Brooks Brothers suit on television screaming the same ideas has all the authority of network sponsorship.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
An Irregular Horse's Mouth
At the Chronicle of Higher Education, Ann Kirschner reports on her unscientific experiment of reading the same novel in book form, as an audiobook, on the iPhone, and on the Kindle: 'I abandoned the Kindle edition of Little Dorrit almost as soon as I read one chapter on my iPhone. Kindle, shmindle. It does almost nothing that an iPhone can't do better — and most important, the iPhone is always with me. Woody Allen had it right: Seventy percent of success in life is showing up. Yes, the Kindle's reasonable imitation of a book is an advantage, but not enough to outweigh the necessity to carry an extra object and its power plugs. The Kindle screen is a permanent dishwater gray, not exactly "just like paper," as promised by the ubiquitous Amazon ads. With free software like eReader or Stanza, iPhone readers have the same capability for customization (font size, footnotes, highlighting, bookmarking) and a more-elegant interface.'
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
and with 'noob' we have a winner
In Foreign Policy today, there is an article which argues that the United States will remain dominant in the world because of English, which is rapidly becoming the unofficial world language. Ali Wyne reports, 'The English language is winning hearts and minds faster than politics ever can. With the June 10 addition of "noob" (a pejorative description of a newcomer to a particular task or group) to its lexicon, English will boast one million words — twice as many as Cantonese, four times as many as Spanish, and 10 times as many as French. . . . English is a first language for 400 million people, and a fluent second for between 300 and 500 million more, the International Herald Tribune wrote. Add on top of that the 750 million who have studied English as a foreign language and you have well over 1 billion members of the English-speaking world.' First, I'd like to thank the author for highlighting the word 'noob' and thereby making my day. Second, I want to point out that around 1775 or so French-speaking people were telling themselves the same thing — and look how that turned out for them. It'll take more than an amorphous thieving polyglot lingua franca to keep America at the fore.
* TBG gets scrappy in response to an inane hysterical conservative whine against non-homogeneous courses of study; and then, soon after that, she clarifies. I nearly posted — in fact, it existed in draught form — an eerily similar tirade against the piece, deciding it better to let Scruton fade away into obscurity and the elegant echo chamber that is conservative thinking. His assumptions about Victorian aesthetic judgements show a shocking ignorance of their moralistic underpinnings, and his understanding of the scientific method, and what becomes 'true' in science as a result, is unfortunately juvenile. My one lasting thought about the issue, as criticism of Scruton's assumption about ideologies: the outcome of study is not (pre)determined by its object.
* Levi Stahl has a nice piece on the merits and drawbacks of self-publishing, at Conversational Reading. The question of self-publishing is one that keeps coming up here, as more and more authors wonder whether that route makes sense for their work. As I read somewhere recently, successes from self-publishing books are very much the exception that proves a rule.
* The Times Literary Supplement makes a practical case for the teaching of literary (new) criticism: 'it seemed quite appropriate that Angleton should be sedulously practising in Ryder Street the reading arts he had learned in the Yale classroom [ed: the so-called New Criticism]. Of course the issue of ambiguity is insignificant when it involves intelligence data of a practical kind. The decoding of military messages is a relatively simple matter. But when counter-intelligence is at stake, when agents may be recognized as "turned," so that what they supply either prevents access to the enemy’s spy system or actively penetrates our own, they themselves become "texts" which demand complex analysis. A sensitivity to ambiguity then becomes a crucial weapon. The improbable but undeniable impact of modern literary criticism on practical politics has no better model, and Angleton later described his work in counter-intelligence as "the practical criticism of ambiguity".'
* The new Murakami novel is absolutely killing in Japan. The AFP reports, 'the publisher said it was working hard to rush out its eighth print run on only the 12th day of its Japanese-language release.' W-O-W.
* TBG gets scrappy in response to an inane hysterical conservative whine against non-homogeneous courses of study; and then, soon after that, she clarifies. I nearly posted — in fact, it existed in draught form — an eerily similar tirade against the piece, deciding it better to let Scruton fade away into obscurity and the elegant echo chamber that is conservative thinking. His assumptions about Victorian aesthetic judgements show a shocking ignorance of their moralistic underpinnings, and his understanding of the scientific method, and what becomes 'true' in science as a result, is unfortunately juvenile. My one lasting thought about the issue, as criticism of Scruton's assumption about ideologies: the outcome of study is not (pre)determined by its object.
* Levi Stahl has a nice piece on the merits and drawbacks of self-publishing, at Conversational Reading. The question of self-publishing is one that keeps coming up here, as more and more authors wonder whether that route makes sense for their work. As I read somewhere recently, successes from self-publishing books are very much the exception that proves a rule.
* The Times Literary Supplement makes a practical case for the teaching of literary (new) criticism: 'it seemed quite appropriate that Angleton should be sedulously practising in Ryder Street the reading arts he had learned in the Yale classroom [ed: the so-called New Criticism]. Of course the issue of ambiguity is insignificant when it involves intelligence data of a practical kind. The decoding of military messages is a relatively simple matter. But when counter-intelligence is at stake, when agents may be recognized as "turned," so that what they supply either prevents access to the enemy’s spy system or actively penetrates our own, they themselves become "texts" which demand complex analysis. A sensitivity to ambiguity then becomes a crucial weapon. The improbable but undeniable impact of modern literary criticism on practical politics has no better model, and Angleton later described his work in counter-intelligence as "the practical criticism of ambiguity".'
* The new Murakami novel is absolutely killing in Japan. The AFP reports, 'the publisher said it was working hard to rush out its eighth print run on only the 12th day of its Japanese-language release.' W-O-W.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Two Day Notes
First, a review of the new Collected C.P. Cavafy at The New Republic, by Peter Green. He writes, 'It would seem that the idea of Cavafy as a mysterious late bloomer is greatly exaggerated. True, much of what he wrote early on was poor stuff; the same is true of many great poets. Yet he also produced, while still in his thirties, at least three of the great poems by which he first won wide recognition. They heralded the appearance of a new and unique voice in European literature: quiet, reflective, philosophical, but at the same time disconcertingly subversive of age-old conventional wisdom.'
Second, I exhort you to patronize this fine event, a reading to celebrate the new Rose Metal Press Field Guide To Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara Masih. Here are the details:
Thursday June 11th, 7pm
Brookline Booksmith
Coolidge Corner, Boston MA
Readings by Steve Almond, Kathleen Rooney,
Stace Budzko, Tara Masih, & Pam Painter
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide To Writing Flash Fiction
/flash/ /fik·shun_n/ n. fiction of extreme brevity, usually 1000 words or less. Join five incredible writers, local and not-so-local, for one flashy night of short, short stories.
Second, I exhort you to patronize this fine event, a reading to celebrate the new Rose Metal Press Field Guide To Writing Flash Fiction, edited by Tara Masih. Here are the details:
Thursday June 11th, 7pm
Brookline Booksmith
Coolidge Corner, Boston MA
Readings by Steve Almond, Kathleen Rooney,
Stace Budzko, Tara Masih, & Pam Painter
The Rose Metal Press Field Guide To Writing Flash Fiction
/flash/ /fik·shun_n/ n. fiction of extreme brevity, usually 1000 words or less. Join five incredible writers, local and not-so-local, for one flashy night of short, short stories.
Monday, June 8, 2009
Hungry Like the Woolf
TBG presented her Mrs. Dalloway paper this weekend at the Virginia Woolf International Conference and did a brilliant, fantastic job (despite the lack of power-point, due to technical malfunctions). A lively (if not always fact-based) discussion followed in the question / answer part of the panel, about war monuments (one young woman misused the term 'total war' and set of a pointless debate) and about whether Peter is 'stalking' the girl with the red flower through Picadilly (yup, he is, the creep).
It struck me, as I was sitting there biting my tongue during the discussions, that at some point a narrowness of specialization creates serious problems for a critic: one woman with an otherwise astounding memory claimed that Woolf was writing meta-fiction in 1925 or 1937, 'long before Joyce,' which is simply incorrect since Joyce published a serialized version of Ulysses in 1918. Now, it isn't a race and the order of things doesn't matter all that much. Being a Woolf scholar, I supposed she'd simply forgotten Joyce's dates. Fai enough. The worry is that one will begin to hold strong opinions that influence one's work based on such confused notions. I began reading Mrs. Dalloway for the first time (yes, I know) on the bus back to Boston and am finding it very similar to Joyce's 'Wandering Rocks' episode from Ulysses — not being a scholar of Woolf, maybe the connection is so well-known that it isn't even worth stating, but in light of the confusion about dates I think it is noteworthy.
Anyhow, the weather was gorgeous for a walk around New York. Got to see three good friends and the newly traffic-free Times Square, in which green lawn chairs have replaced cars, cabs, and busses. A funny sight to see. I also discovered that the only place in New York City where I have no service is in the south Bronx (awesome). We had dinner on Saturday evening at a family-style Peruvian spot. It seriously rekindled my love for fried plantains.
* Lots of John Updike this weekend. First, a review of Updike's Endpoints and Other Poems by Frank Fitzpatrick at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Next, it's a review by Godine author Brad Leithauser at Slate of Updike's My Father and Other Stories. And finally, a review at The New York Times of the same story collection, this one by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
Boyle writes, 'Of these 18 stories, all but one (an odd travelogue called “Morocco,” dating from 1979) were published in the last decade, and their themes and situations hark back to the author’s earliest autobiographical fiction, especially the stories set in Olinger, Updike’s fictionalized version of Shillington. The difference here is that the protagonists in this collection are, for the most part, at the end of their lives, and so the news of familial drama and divorce and the cocktail parties, barbecues and casual wooings of quotidian life in suburbia is given retrospectively, wistfully, presented in the larger context as memories of lost moments and lost opportunities.' Those early short works are among my favorite Updike, so although I was disappointed by Terrorist, I might have to pick this one up.
* At The Boston Globe, David Barber reviews the poetry of C.P. Cavafy, Aga Ali, and Thom Gunn. Barber writes, 'If poets were taxonomically classified like the birds and the beasts, the lion's share would fall neatly under one of the two great phyla of the literary biosphere: native country and mother tongue. But then there are the anomalies: horses of another color, leopards who change their spots, flukes of nature that are neither fish nor fowl.' You can guess in which he feels these three poets belong.
* Sarah Crowne reviews Fredrick Seidel's 2006 poetry collection Ooga Booga at The Guardian — and I feel that the delay between US and UK publications dates must be slowly widening. Crowne writes, 'The audacity of his talent is evident from the title onwards: it's difficult to imagine another poet who would have the chutzpah to call his collection anything as childishly risible as Ooga-Booga — and impossible to imagine another who could pull it off as Seidel does, overlaying the nonsensical bogeyman-bellow with insolent menace. But while each new collection garners fresh bouquets from the critics, his country has held back from taking him to its heart; over here, meanwhile, despite Faber's publication of his Collected Poems in 2006, his name is barely known.' It is not much different in his native land, madame.
* Ron Rosenblume at Slate argues for the rescuing of JD Salinger's archives, even if it means a late-in-life seizure from the author himself. 'Perhaps he's writing not for publication but for God, which would mean there'd be no need to preserve any material traces of his work. For all we know, he's planning on destroying it — or has already.But what if there were real stuff up there? Real Salinger-esque stuff.' One can imagine, though, from his isolation, a Salinger whose connection to the world today has lapsed so fully as to effectively nil; that even if it were 'real Salinger-esque stuff,' it would be a living artifact more than a moving work of art. Or it might be transcendent and completely brilliant. Hard to say.
* And then, there's this:
It struck me, as I was sitting there biting my tongue during the discussions, that at some point a narrowness of specialization creates serious problems for a critic: one woman with an otherwise astounding memory claimed that Woolf was writing meta-fiction in 1925 or 1937, 'long before Joyce,' which is simply incorrect since Joyce published a serialized version of Ulysses in 1918. Now, it isn't a race and the order of things doesn't matter all that much. Being a Woolf scholar, I supposed she'd simply forgotten Joyce's dates. Fai enough. The worry is that one will begin to hold strong opinions that influence one's work based on such confused notions. I began reading Mrs. Dalloway for the first time (yes, I know) on the bus back to Boston and am finding it very similar to Joyce's 'Wandering Rocks' episode from Ulysses — not being a scholar of Woolf, maybe the connection is so well-known that it isn't even worth stating, but in light of the confusion about dates I think it is noteworthy.
Anyhow, the weather was gorgeous for a walk around New York. Got to see three good friends and the newly traffic-free Times Square, in which green lawn chairs have replaced cars, cabs, and busses. A funny sight to see. I also discovered that the only place in New York City where I have no service is in the south Bronx (awesome). We had dinner on Saturday evening at a family-style Peruvian spot. It seriously rekindled my love for fried plantains.
* Lots of John Updike this weekend. First, a review of Updike's Endpoints and Other Poems by Frank Fitzpatrick at the Philadelphia Inquirer. Next, it's a review by Godine author Brad Leithauser at Slate of Updike's My Father and Other Stories. And finally, a review at The New York Times of the same story collection, this one by T. Coraghessan Boyle.
Boyle writes, 'Of these 18 stories, all but one (an odd travelogue called “Morocco,” dating from 1979) were published in the last decade, and their themes and situations hark back to the author’s earliest autobiographical fiction, especially the stories set in Olinger, Updike’s fictionalized version of Shillington. The difference here is that the protagonists in this collection are, for the most part, at the end of their lives, and so the news of familial drama and divorce and the cocktail parties, barbecues and casual wooings of quotidian life in suburbia is given retrospectively, wistfully, presented in the larger context as memories of lost moments and lost opportunities.' Those early short works are among my favorite Updike, so although I was disappointed by Terrorist, I might have to pick this one up.
* At The Boston Globe, David Barber reviews the poetry of C.P. Cavafy, Aga Ali, and Thom Gunn. Barber writes, 'If poets were taxonomically classified like the birds and the beasts, the lion's share would fall neatly under one of the two great phyla of the literary biosphere: native country and mother tongue. But then there are the anomalies: horses of another color, leopards who change their spots, flukes of nature that are neither fish nor fowl.' You can guess in which he feels these three poets belong.
* Sarah Crowne reviews Fredrick Seidel's 2006 poetry collection Ooga Booga at The Guardian — and I feel that the delay between US and UK publications dates must be slowly widening. Crowne writes, 'The audacity of his talent is evident from the title onwards: it's difficult to imagine another poet who would have the chutzpah to call his collection anything as childishly risible as Ooga-Booga — and impossible to imagine another who could pull it off as Seidel does, overlaying the nonsensical bogeyman-bellow with insolent menace. But while each new collection garners fresh bouquets from the critics, his country has held back from taking him to its heart; over here, meanwhile, despite Faber's publication of his Collected Poems in 2006, his name is barely known.' It is not much different in his native land, madame.
* Ron Rosenblume at Slate argues for the rescuing of JD Salinger's archives, even if it means a late-in-life seizure from the author himself. 'Perhaps he's writing not for publication but for God, which would mean there'd be no need to preserve any material traces of his work. For all we know, he's planning on destroying it — or has already.But what if there were real stuff up there? Real Salinger-esque stuff.' One can imagine, though, from his isolation, a Salinger whose connection to the world today has lapsed so fully as to effectively nil; that even if it were 'real Salinger-esque stuff,' it would be a living artifact more than a moving work of art. Or it might be transcendent and completely brilliant. Hard to say.
* And then, there's this:
Friday, June 5, 2009
Great Ceasar's Ghost!
I can't believe we're going back to New York City this weekend. TBG is presenting a paper at the Virginia Woolf Conference, and I'll be in the audience basically to clap hardest for her. She also has a new blog, Peas & Carrots, which you ought to read because she's great.
* At The New Criterion, William Logan reviews a bushel of titles: Billy Collins, Thom Gunn, Jim Powell, Katha Pollitt, Rita Dove, and Arda Collins [no relation to Billy]. Of the suddenly unfunny Billy Collins he writes: 'Poetry must do what Poetry does when a poet runs out of gas, or screws the pooch, or jumps the shark — give him a Pulitzer and show him the door.' Ah, well. Easy targets and all that. Though Logan does say of Pollitt, later, that 'if you gave the same idea to Billy Collins, he’d do it better.'
Logan also includes a both admiring and admirable short review of Gunn: '[his] best work had to fend off [Yvor] Winters in his smugness and rectitude on one hand and San Francisco’s beatniks and hippies on the other, but he never stopped trying to treat the incompatible realms of his experience as if they formed a whole. . . . This selection stresses the reasoned continuity of Gunn’s work, evident in his formal poetry until the end. (Even late, he could make a lot of metaphysical hay out of a nasturtium found in a vacant lot.) What remain are, for the most part, the poems that take serious things seriously, culminating in the elegies he wrote during the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s.'
* At The New Yorker (which, I, in some desire not to seem like a preening ass, find myself embarrassed to read in public), Louis Menand has a(nother) long review of The Program Era. This book just does not deserve as many column inches as it is getting, not because of its relative merit, but because of its being of interest mostly to the echo chamber that is the literary scene. When I first came across the book, I thought CF would have the only long review. Clearly I underestimated the appeal.
In related news, as tuitions become ever-unreachable for the less monitarily endowed, some (jackass) alumni has granted the vitally important creative writing program at Boston University two million dollars. BU Today reports, 'Half of the $2 million will benefit the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship Fund in Creative Writing, which will send students in the Creative Writing Program to international destinations as a capstone experience for their graduate work. The other half of Hildreth’s gift will provide funding for the Leslie Epstein International Visiting Professorship, which will host eminent international writers to mentor students in the Creative Writing Program.' I'm sure that money could not possibly have been put to better use somewhere, such as hiring a few low-level staff people who desperately need the income. Not at all. At some point, the tax exempt status of private universities ought to become merit-based.
* Harvard University is ready to announce a new 'visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies,' The New York Times reports. Is it really the first of its kind? That seems unbelievable to me, but only in so far as I sometimes assume the world is more reasonable and virtuous than it actually is. Apparently Yale turned down a similar proposed chair some ten years ago.
* This looks very like, but is not This. I find it funny.
* At The New Criterion, William Logan reviews a bushel of titles: Billy Collins, Thom Gunn, Jim Powell, Katha Pollitt, Rita Dove, and Arda Collins [no relation to Billy]. Of the suddenly unfunny Billy Collins he writes: 'Poetry must do what Poetry does when a poet runs out of gas, or screws the pooch, or jumps the shark — give him a Pulitzer and show him the door.' Ah, well. Easy targets and all that. Though Logan does say of Pollitt, later, that 'if you gave the same idea to Billy Collins, he’d do it better.'
Logan also includes a both admiring and admirable short review of Gunn: '[his] best work had to fend off [Yvor] Winters in his smugness and rectitude on one hand and San Francisco’s beatniks and hippies on the other, but he never stopped trying to treat the incompatible realms of his experience as if they formed a whole. . . . This selection stresses the reasoned continuity of Gunn’s work, evident in his formal poetry until the end. (Even late, he could make a lot of metaphysical hay out of a nasturtium found in a vacant lot.) What remain are, for the most part, the poems that take serious things seriously, culminating in the elegies he wrote during the AIDS outbreak of the 1980s.'
* At The New Yorker (which, I, in some desire not to seem like a preening ass, find myself embarrassed to read in public), Louis Menand has a(nother) long review of The Program Era. This book just does not deserve as many column inches as it is getting, not because of its relative merit, but because of its being of interest mostly to the echo chamber that is the literary scene. When I first came across the book, I thought CF would have the only long review. Clearly I underestimated the appeal.
In related news, as tuitions become ever-unreachable for the less monitarily endowed, some (jackass) alumni has granted the vitally important creative writing program at Boston University two million dollars. BU Today reports, 'Half of the $2 million will benefit the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship Fund in Creative Writing, which will send students in the Creative Writing Program to international destinations as a capstone experience for their graduate work. The other half of Hildreth’s gift will provide funding for the Leslie Epstein International Visiting Professorship, which will host eminent international writers to mentor students in the Creative Writing Program.' I'm sure that money could not possibly have been put to better use somewhere, such as hiring a few low-level staff people who desperately need the income. Not at all. At some point, the tax exempt status of private universities ought to become merit-based.
* Harvard University is ready to announce a new 'visiting professorship in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender studies,' The New York Times reports. Is it really the first of its kind? That seems unbelievable to me, but only in so far as I sometimes assume the world is more reasonable and virtuous than it actually is. Apparently Yale turned down a similar proposed chair some ten years ago.
* This looks very like, but is not This. I find it funny.
Wednesday, June 3, 2009
Glorious Day Off
I had a glorious day off today as compensation for working the weekend in New York. Went to the gym late this morning (it was empty), had lunch with TBG (she's presenting a paper at the Virginia Woolf conference this weekend), visited my friend Zak Bos (of Boston Poetry Union fame), and then worked on my review of D.A. Powell's new collection Chronic for the July issue of The Critical Flame. Enough about me. Now, on to your goodies.
* I continue to be proud of New England. Live free, or die.
* This whole Derek Walcott debacle is just ridiculous (see the New York Times rundown by David Orr). The most recent development is a group letter published in this week's Times Literary Supplement. 'Dear Derek Walcott, We, nineteen of the twenty poets who were honoured to nominate you for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry (nineteen more than nominated any other candidate), together with an "uncommitted" earlier occupant of Matthew Arnold's Chair, write to express our dismay and disgust at the cowardly smearcampaign against your candidacy in an election that, in our view, should long since have been abandoned.'
* At Conversational Reading, guest blogger Andrew Seal reviews The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (a title scheduled for forthcoming review at CF). 'McGurl’s book is, first and foremost, a call to see and think critically about the glaringly obvious: although creative writing programs pre-dated WWII, their growth after 1945 is the bold-faced headline of the story of late 20th century literature. . . . McGurl doesn’t back away from the question of the aesthetic consequences of the rise of the program; in fact, he uses the two main charges against creative writing, "that it is self-involved, that it is unoriginal," as his main analytical categories—in what ways, he asks, are the works produced by writers associated with programs not so much self-involved as reflexive—interested in expressing ideas about the nature and grounds of their creation—and in what ways are they systematic—that is, how do they bear the traces of a common (but changing) set of ideas about what counts as good writing?'
* At Slate's new women's section, Double X, Honor Moore describes the effect that Ariel had on writers at that time, and long after. 'Younger women like myself began to look to poetry as a way to articulate our own suppressed feelings, finding in Plath’s tragedy a mirror for our own pain, and in her provocation and wit, dramatization of a discomfort we could not quite identify.' (The July issue of CF will also have a review of Jury of Her Peers.)
* The New York Times reports that the 'founder' of Slam Poetry 'Marc Kelly Smith expresses mixed feelings about the growing popularity and respectability of the art form that he created almost 25 years ago. From the start, he envisioned slam poetry as a subversive, thumb-your-nose-at-authority movement, and he wants to ensure it stays true to those origins.' I'm all for the performance of poetry, but what about those performance poets who write from within the authority structures? Or have no wish to be political? Slam Poetry is, by its own definition, a political scene, not an artistic form. It seems particularly adolescent in all its mindless thumbing.
* I continue to be proud of New England. Live free, or die.
* This whole Derek Walcott debacle is just ridiculous (see the New York Times rundown by David Orr). The most recent development is a group letter published in this week's Times Literary Supplement. 'Dear Derek Walcott, We, nineteen of the twenty poets who were honoured to nominate you for the Oxford Professorship of Poetry (nineteen more than nominated any other candidate), together with an "uncommitted" earlier occupant of Matthew Arnold's Chair, write to express our dismay and disgust at the cowardly smearcampaign against your candidacy in an election that, in our view, should long since have been abandoned.'
* At Conversational Reading, guest blogger Andrew Seal reviews The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing (a title scheduled for forthcoming review at CF). 'McGurl’s book is, first and foremost, a call to see and think critically about the glaringly obvious: although creative writing programs pre-dated WWII, their growth after 1945 is the bold-faced headline of the story of late 20th century literature. . . . McGurl doesn’t back away from the question of the aesthetic consequences of the rise of the program; in fact, he uses the two main charges against creative writing, "that it is self-involved, that it is unoriginal," as his main analytical categories—in what ways, he asks, are the works produced by writers associated with programs not so much self-involved as reflexive—interested in expressing ideas about the nature and grounds of their creation—and in what ways are they systematic—that is, how do they bear the traces of a common (but changing) set of ideas about what counts as good writing?'
* At Slate's new women's section, Double X, Honor Moore describes the effect that Ariel had on writers at that time, and long after. 'Younger women like myself began to look to poetry as a way to articulate our own suppressed feelings, finding in Plath’s tragedy a mirror for our own pain, and in her provocation and wit, dramatization of a discomfort we could not quite identify.' (The July issue of CF will also have a review of Jury of Her Peers.)
* The New York Times reports that the 'founder' of Slam Poetry 'Marc Kelly Smith expresses mixed feelings about the growing popularity and respectability of the art form that he created almost 25 years ago. From the start, he envisioned slam poetry as a subversive, thumb-your-nose-at-authority movement, and he wants to ensure it stays true to those origins.' I'm all for the performance of poetry, but what about those performance poets who write from within the authority structures? Or have no wish to be political? Slam Poetry is, by its own definition, a political scene, not an artistic form. It seems particularly adolescent in all its mindless thumbing.
Monday, June 1, 2009
This Was My Book Expo 2009
I'm back from Book Expo, and I am utterly completely exhausted. Had dinner with an old friend Friday and then TBG and I had a very nice dinner on Saturday night at Commerce in the West Village; but other than that, it was all work all the time. There are dozens of people with whom I need to follow up and to whom I need to send books, posters, galleys, etc. Was very glad to meet Chad Post from Open Letter, Allan Kornblum from Coffee House Press, several people from publications I read and admire, as well as a couple of very accomplished Godine alumni. Actually, compared with BEA two years ago, this show was definitely smaller so I think the people who visited our booth were altogether more collegial.
At The New York Times, Motoko Rich writes, 'publishers seemed to be putting their own stamps on the increasingly frenzied conversation about electronic books that has hijacked the business.' I'm not sure that it was the case of publishers actively pursuing the e-book as much as it was a frenzy of e-book producers hitting up every booth, in order — in the past we'd be deflecting printers, designers, and production companies. And then, as Rich reports, there are the curmudgeons:
'At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices "elitist" and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, "I wanted to hit her".'
Nice. There were a number of panels I would have liked to attend, and didn't get the chance for various reasons. At the top of my list was the "Stupid Things" panel, which I missed because our booth was in a high-traffic area (good problems), and on which Publishers Weekly reports. It sounds like the panle was productive. Judith Rosen writes, '[Dominique] Raccah [of Sourcebooks] made a pitch for booksellers to devote more time, money and shelf space to books that don’t come from the big six conglomerates. Those titles, she said, get a disproportionate amount of all three, even though they constitute just over half of all sales, or 54%.'
It's an excellent point. I almost never visit big-box stores just to browse because their selections tend to be very, very predictable. I agree that the balance between returnability and discounts needs to be revised; but the way that bookstores buy and the way that publishers market and sell in to stores needs to be rethought as well. My impression is that there's too much hard-selling of titles to bookstores where they don't belong. Also, from a purely business standpoint: why isn't there a conglomerate publishing house with its own retail arm yet? How has this not happened?
Most publishers were cutting back on giveaways and galleys, the LA Times reports; and BEA cut back on the 'riff-raff' (their words, though we did notice there were fewer very odd book proposals). Godine was bucking some trends this year, though: we had three new big photography titles to show off and way more marketing material than usual, including two letterpress pieces and boxes of galleys for Desert and Arctic Circle to give away. And man they really went. We had to ration.
I'm not a natural small-talker, and cold-greeting that many people totally wears me out. By the end of the day on both Saturday and Sunday I got a little punchy, which means that my sense of humor goes personal and deep second-level, and I end up pitching knee-buckling non-sequitors and embarrassing some otherwise nice, bright booth visitors. Apologies to the two friendly and patient women at the National Book Award table who I tried to bribe. Really, I was just kidding. Sorry to the lone guy at the small, deserted New York Times booth: when I asked where everyone was it was surely a sign of honest concern. Ditto the Macmillan / Picador publicist I clearly offended — she offered me a Joseph Kanon galley and I asked if they had anything 'more literary'. Whoops!
Blame it on the gridded streets. They give me vertigo.
At The New York Times, Motoko Rich writes, 'publishers seemed to be putting their own stamps on the increasingly frenzied conversation about electronic books that has hijacked the business.' I'm not sure that it was the case of publishers actively pursuing the e-book as much as it was a frenzy of e-book producers hitting up every booth, in order — in the past we'd be deflecting printers, designers, and production companies. And then, as Rich reports, there are the curmudgeons:
'At a panel of authors speaking mainly to independent booksellers, Sherman Alexie, the National Book Award-winning author of The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, said he refused to allow his novels to be made available in digital form. He called the expensive reading devices "elitist" and declared that when he saw a woman sitting on the plane with a Kindle on his flight to New York, "I wanted to hit her".'
Nice. There were a number of panels I would have liked to attend, and didn't get the chance for various reasons. At the top of my list was the "Stupid Things" panel, which I missed because our booth was in a high-traffic area (good problems), and on which Publishers Weekly reports. It sounds like the panle was productive. Judith Rosen writes, '[Dominique] Raccah [of Sourcebooks] made a pitch for booksellers to devote more time, money and shelf space to books that don’t come from the big six conglomerates. Those titles, she said, get a disproportionate amount of all three, even though they constitute just over half of all sales, or 54%.'
It's an excellent point. I almost never visit big-box stores just to browse because their selections tend to be very, very predictable. I agree that the balance between returnability and discounts needs to be revised; but the way that bookstores buy and the way that publishers market and sell in to stores needs to be rethought as well. My impression is that there's too much hard-selling of titles to bookstores where they don't belong. Also, from a purely business standpoint: why isn't there a conglomerate publishing house with its own retail arm yet? How has this not happened?
Most publishers were cutting back on giveaways and galleys, the LA Times reports; and BEA cut back on the 'riff-raff' (their words, though we did notice there were fewer very odd book proposals). Godine was bucking some trends this year, though: we had three new big photography titles to show off and way more marketing material than usual, including two letterpress pieces and boxes of galleys for Desert and Arctic Circle to give away. And man they really went. We had to ration.
I'm not a natural small-talker, and cold-greeting that many people totally wears me out. By the end of the day on both Saturday and Sunday I got a little punchy, which means that my sense of humor goes personal and deep second-level, and I end up pitching knee-buckling non-sequitors and embarrassing some otherwise nice, bright booth visitors. Apologies to the two friendly and patient women at the National Book Award table who I tried to bribe. Really, I was just kidding. Sorry to the lone guy at the small, deserted New York Times booth: when I asked where everyone was it was surely a sign of honest concern. Ditto the Macmillan / Picador publicist I clearly offended — she offered me a Joseph Kanon galley and I asked if they had anything 'more literary'. Whoops!
Blame it on the gridded streets. They give me vertigo.
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