Tag: literary criticism

gr(eat)

Matthew EilarLeave a comment

I never get tired of the highbrow/lowbrow debate. There’s a long article in the Chronicle of Higher Education on (according to the writer, Michael Clune) a reluctance for humanities scholars to engage in critical evaluation (as opposed to interpretation).

This eschewal of hierarchy appears eminently progressive. Who am I to say that one book is better than another? Why should I tell you what you should read? Everyone’s taste is equal. No one’s judgment is any better or worse than anyone else’s. […] The abdication of professional judgment throws all questions of value into the marketplace. The free market is where consumers, whose preferences are all accorded equal status, exercise their cultural choices.

Ulysses at the court of Alcinous by Francesco Hayez. In other words, poetry in the literal marketplace.

Is making a hierarchical ranking the same thing as making an aesthetic judgement? Clune performs this little misdirection throughout the essay. Ranking things in lists seems like an insane way to engage with any art form to me. Art criticism must start with what’s on the page or on the canvas, but it’s no longer tenable to ignore the other axes of power and cultural capital that lead to one thing being considered a masterpiece and another forgotten. Clune tries to head off this argument: “Criticizing the limits of equality doesn’t mean ignoring the pathologies of expertise. Many expert judgments of the past bear the ugly marks of racism and sexism. Probably many of our own judgments will seem similarly distorted in the future.” Clune seems unwilling to entertain the idea that the cultural hierarchy he’s defending is simply a mirror of social hierarchy.

The deadliest trap in art is the circular logic trap that comes about when “Is this the best?” leads to “To whom?” which is then answered by “Us!” The exclusivity of the connoisseur becomes evidence the greatness of the work, and the greatness of the work becomes evidence of the enlightened nature of the connoisseur. This is something I am very passionate about: I think that the whole world of art and literature and culture opens up when you get away from that question.

I do think Clune is coming from a good place, he writes sentimentally about a vivid reading experience he had as a teenager, exploring the Japanese poet Bashō. This is a great example of the questions that go unexplored when you’re just looking at hierarchy: why is Bashō a part of your poetry canon, when he would not have been if you were reading poetry at Oxford 100 years ago? How does a poem move in and out of “greatness?”

A little more on The Marriage Plot

Matthew Eilar2 Comments

While looking at post-read reviews of The Marriage Plot, I came upon this sour review by William Deresiewicz for The New York Times. One paragraph that made my blood boil:

You almost can’t believe the same person is responsible for “Middlesex.” Clanking prose, clunky exposition, transparent devices, telegraphed moves — the novel is “Midnight’s Children” without the magic, the intellect or the grand historical occasion, a hash of narrative contrivances with very little on its mind. In making these judgments, of course — the novel was a huge best seller and a Pulitzer Prize winner, to boot — I am joining a minority of perhaps no more than one. But I found the whole thing utterly unpersuasive. Take away its trendy theme and dollops of ethnic schmaltz (it could have been called “My Big Fat Greek Novel”), and “Middlesex” scarcely contains a single real character or genuine emotion.

Ok, so you don’t like the book as much as I did. Fine. But nothing makes me so angry as the (small-c) conservative suspicion that any writers with novels that deal with characters other than WASP heterosexuals are cheating somehow. Why the fuck should I take anything away? Greek families and the intersexual experience are what the book is about. Why is that illegitimate? Plus, since it’s theme is so “trendy,” please point to the other Pulitzer prize winning books that deal with intersexuality.

I could only imagine that Deresiewicz is an Armond White-level troll, and that seems to be true. He wrote this skin tinglingly gross passage about Zadie Smith, while panning of On Beauty:

Her debut novel, White Teeth, was received with a frenzy of adulation: Showered with awards and translated into more than twenty languages, it vaulted its author into the forefront of young British novelists. Smith’s personal story didn’t hurt: The 24-year-old daughter of an English father and Jamaican mother, she’d signed the book deal while still at Cambridge. Her looks didn’t hurt, either: Smith takes a great publicity shot. In fact, her ascent was part of the late-’90s fad for beautiful young women novelists with Commonwealth roots (itself a subset of the post-cold war globalization frenzy).

Gross. I suppose one of the penalties for writing a book is that creeps like Deresiewicz get to read it.