The Hermeneutics of Suspicion

Josh Corey detects an "anti-literary" attitude behind much contemporary poetry and fiction:

We have overshot, then, the hermeneutics of suspicion that characterized "theory" in the 1970s to arrive at a poetics of suspicion: only literature that puts the very premises of the literary into question can now summon the aesthetic impact we associate with great literature. This may represent the most complete assimilation by authors of the skeptical stance that diffused itself in the last universally acknowledged great wave of postmodern fiction (Pynchon, Delillo, Coover) and poetry (Ashbery, Ashbery, Ashbery). Now it's not merely literary strategies that are picked apart and turned around through unreliable narrators, disordered chronologies, the blurring of fact and fiction, extreme parataxis, etc. It's the literary itself, the summoning and deployment of aesthetic effects, summarized in the phrase "beautiful language.

On one level, it is quite appropriate for writers to proceed on the assumption it is necessary to employ strategies that put "the very premises of the literary into question." Both poetry and fiction become dessicated and convention-encrusted when established notions of what makes literature "literary" go unchallenged. I would agree with Josh that such a "skeptical stance" is what motivated the greatest of the postmodernists (although his list leaves out perhaps the most thoroughgoingly skeptical of the postmodernists, writers such as Gilbert Sorrentino or Donald Barthelme), but such skepticism was not intended to destroy literature but to enhance it, to open up the possibilities for "aesthetic impact," not to deny the validity of the aesthetic. To the extent that "asethetic effects" can be encapsulated in the formulation "beautiful language," perhaps the postmodernists and their successors (Josh discusses W.G. Sebald and Roberto Bolano in particular) were calling literature dependent on it into question, but ultimately they were themselves rebelling against the notion of "beautiful language"--and the usually quiescent formal approaches associated with it--as a defining feature of "literature" in the first place.

On another level, the attempt to "escape" the literary is, of course, doomed to failure. The very attempt to "pick apart" or "turn around" usually results in a new strategy or style that doesn't abandon strategy and style but adds a fresh perspective on both. As Josh writes of Sebald: "Sebald's work first shocked readers with its apparently artless photographs and endless paragraphs, but in recollection the work is nearly limpid, its melancholy polished to a high gleam." Once one commits to writing in one of the literary forms, poetry or fiction or drama, efforts to escape the perceived limitiations of those forms while remaining within the practices of the forms broadly conceived--while continuing to accept the designation "poet," or "novelist"--are going to wind up being not "anti-literary" at all but, if they're successful, the latest additions to our understanding of what "the literary" might encompass. No matter how "useful" you might want your poem or your story to be--which is to say, for it to be more than "merely literary"--its ultimate utility will be to those who are interested in the perpetuation of the literary.

Which is not to say that all poems, novels, or plays conceived by their authors (and perhaps received by critics) as "useful" or "anti-literary" can't be aesthetically accomplished in the way "we associate with great literature." As Josh himself notes, if the attempt to "move beyond" poetry or fiction is what is required for a writer to produce interesting poetry or fiction, then so be it. If Thomas Pynchon needed to imagine he was writing a "critique" of the emergence of the American techno-military empire in order to write Gravity's Rainbow, I'm ok with that, although it's certainly not as such a critique that I appreciate the novel (nor, in the longest run, will future readers, when regarding it as primarily an historical exercise will likely render it unreadable). It's the humor, the narrative ingenuity, above all the language, which certainly isn't "beautiful," that makes it the great "literary" novel that it is. If writers need to think they're starting a revolution against literature--and I don't really suspect Pynchon thought he was doing this--in order to create, well, new works of literature, then viva la revolucion!

Comments

[Abbeville]

Er, "can seem like" an awfully parochial genre. Damn, now I look like an authorial tool myself.

[Abbeville]

True, Dan, and that comment was meant to second your analysis of Josh Corey's post, not contradict it. Maybe the distinction here is between a basic authorial tool and a new application of that tool. Contemporary critics are too apt to credit modern/postmodern literature with reinventing the toolkit, whereas it has really only reused and recombined tools in innovative ways, as every era does.

"Only literature that puts the very premises of the literary into question can now summon the aesthetic impact we associate with great literature"--this argument, which Corey seems to be resisting or qualifying, can simply be dismissed outright. Literature always wriggles out of such prescriptive chokeholds. As you point out, questioning the old, the conventional, the artifically "beautiful" is part and parcel of what vital literature does. But at the same time, not every great book tries to start a revolution--or needs to. Those who think that more "conventional" realist fiction (the kind that James Wood is accused of parochially favoring) is a dead or obsolete art should read, for example, Amy Bloom's novel of last year, "Away." They may find that when the language is beautiful enough and the fictional dream persuasive enough, fiction obsessed with questioning literary premises and raging against antiquated notions of the beautiful can be an awfully parochial genre itself.

[Dan Green]

"but "putting the very premises of literature in question" is as old as literature itself."

"most of the basic tools in the authorial toolkit were invented long ago"

It's true that "putting the premises in question" goes back far into literary history--this is the point of my post, and your own example of Fielding creating a new kind of "novelistic" language is a good one.

But Fielding's speicific innovation was not "invented long ago," or he wouldn't have had to invent it. The same is true of all the innovations in fiction post-Fielding. Otherwise everyone would still be writing like him.

[Abbeville]

Postmodernism flatters itself too much with the supposed novelty of its effects. There's no question that highly metafictional fiction has been in vogue for some decades now, but "putting the very premises of literature in question" is as old as literature itself. Think of Fielding, who loves satirizing the "beautiful language" of the epic, draws constant attention to the worldly, "anti-literary" nature of his characters and story, and so on, leaving his authorial fingerprints all over the work. Or Sterne, who plays in "Tristram Shandy" with virtually every trick in the postmodernist book, "disordered chronology" and "extreme parataxis" included. Heck, think back to the "The Canterbury Tales": the virtuoso language games, the delight in metafiction, the earthy humor are all there six hundred years before Pynchon.

Authors and critics still make the mistake of conceiving literature as progressive, with each era more evolved, more enlightened, more "modern" than the last. Nothing could be further from the truth. That's not to say that there's nothing new under the sun--there are always new voices, sometimes new ideas--only that most of the basic tools in the authorial toolkit were invented long ago, and simply go into and out of fashion as different authors pick them up or drop them.

[King Wenclas]

This discussion comes across like a narrow group of theologians debating how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. Step back and look at it.
With literature being marginalized in this society, this kind of attitude is the LAST thing we need. The idea is to be literary evangelists speaking with clarity (and no less involving ideas-- real world ideas) to the greater public; with words which can connect with that public.
Just my two cents.

[Martyn Everett]

To believe that the "purpose of the university (is) to produce knowledge, not to foster appreciation." is to misunderstand the function of Academia. The University acts as gatekeeper and defines what is "acceptable" or "legitimate knowledge", it also acts as gatekeeper for the class of "new mandarins" sorting, grading and certifying recruits for industry, academia and the state bureaucracy. Knowledge can exist quite easily outside the University, which doesn't produce knowledge, but processes it. John Clare's knowledge and understanding of nature did not require approval or certification by academia, but it now helps sustain numerous professors on high salaries.

The University's role can be clearly seen in the continuing flow of almost unreadable texts that are offered as a substitute for literary criticism. Texts that rely on an in-group vocabulary to ensure that literary discussion and analysis is confined to other academics.

It might be true that in some subjects the University "produces" knowledge - in a technical sense - the increasing investment for military research purposes, and closer integration with big business might be seen as stimulating pure knowledge in a technical sense, although in fact the knowledge that results has been predetermined by powerful social elites.

[Jacob Russell]

I am baffled... how does an insistance on the immediately experiential translate into "mysticism".. or mystical rhetoric.. or..

We hold tie our experiences into ideas, narratives, abstractions... but what we live, are ephermoral moments, vanishing perceptions. Absent the idea of something that binds them together, a reality more real than the real, something "behind" or "beyond" the immediate... that sort of gnostic claim you might call mystical.

What I've said about the aesthetic experience has nothing to do with any sort of "beyond" ... includeing the ideological uses we would put to those experiences, the "knowledge" we would claim to derive from them to justify them.

Is there no room, no freedom from the tyrany of Ellul's "Technological" mind? From the fascists of the "useful?"

Anything that can be put to use can be made into a weapon.

There is nothing that can't be, by translation, put to use.

But the translation, in this case, is rape and murder. Let's hold out some room for hope that there is a residua for the useless... or shall we just take up arms and join in the mutual slaugter?

[LML]

The question of what research a scholar might rightfully pursue is different from the question of what approaches to literature s/he ought to impose on 18-year-olds. I personally loved being exposed to theory in college, and I continue to find Barthes in particular as provocative an observer of society as many major novelists writing during his lifetime--but these encounters were small potatoes compared to my encounters with Proust and Joyce and Beckett, none of whose work I was assigned in college.

Also, it's an overstatement to tell non-specialists that we can't possibly "get" Virgil or Fielding or Gary Snyder without making massive efforts at contextualization. Literary works survive precisely to the extent that communication across cultural gaps is possible. Lesser works need advocates/historicizers to survive. If you say that I must know X before being able to understand Y, I will tell you that Y is not the real thing. Of course, this kind of statement depends on the abilities of the reader who is making the statement, and it's possible that I overestimate my own abilities. I agree with Zadie Smith's contention that really good readers are almost as rare as really good writers.

That there's something to be gained by studying lesser literature, which doesn't survive translation across the gaps, is beyond question, but this can't ever replace a personal encounter with an enduring text. It is hardly mysticism to propose that a person who died thousands of years ago can communicate something of his or her way of seeing and feeling and thinking to me today. It is an amazing fact, but it is not premised on anything supernatural. This survival is based on a writer's aesthetic gifts, an ability to construct sentences or verses or images or situations that are durable or beautiful or insightful enough to survive all manner of indignity.

I can't read a syllable of ancient Greek, I have only the flimsiest layman's knowledge of Athenian history and culture, and it is my understanding that even experts do not really know what Greek drama looked and sounded like on stage, but I am moved beyond description by the scene in Ajax in which Ajax, tricked by Ulysses and Athena into killing a bunch of cattle, is wailing at his mistake amid all those bloody corpses in his tent. Much of this text, which is only an outline of the real aesthetic product Sophocles wanted people to see, survives to connect me with the playwright and his audience.

This is not a trivial form of connection. It may well serve as a gateway to further information, but this gateway function is merely a bonus.

[Dan Green]

I'm willing to accept a split between the work of blogs or generalist print publications doing literary criticism and academic scholarship doing something else. At some point, however, academic literature departments need to just fess up they're no longer doing "literature" and to more honestly describe what it is they are doing: cultural studies or historicism or whatever. They should stop selling what they do to prospective students as "literary study."

If it really is true it "isn't possible to get what Snyder is trying to do unless you are either already knowledgeable with Japanese literature or are willing to do research," then in my opinion that's a flaw in the poetry. It's become something else, something closer to a religious practice. I've not found Snyder's poems quite that hermetic (admittedly I have't read all of his work), so there must be some wiggle room in that "isn't possible to get." Some of the other works you mention do raise problems of comprehensibility--I find The Divine Comedy almost unreadable because of the incessant allusive warfare against Dante'e political foes, for example--but I think most of them can still hold up to an aesthetic reading. I don't oppose tracking down information or readings that aid in comprehensibility; in many cases they can be used to enhance aesthetic appreciation on subsequent readings.

I believe Brecht and Shaw (Sinclair is another matter) can be appreciated aesthetically even now. It requires bringing what Dewey called a "special focus" on the formal or "poetic" qualties of the work and bracketting the politics or social commentary. One could choose to regard Brecht's politics as what motivated him to write some formally and rhetorically interesting plays. Two hundred years from now this may be the only way to take his work.

I think the allegedly "pseudo-mystical diction" was Jacob Russell's rather than mine.

[ElAleph]

OK, obviously both of us know that there is value in both text-centered close-reading and theoretical meta-text analysis. The only real disagreement, then, is about how English departments prefer to do the latter. You think English departments should put aesthetics are "the forefront of literary study." However, although it is definitely possible and worthwhile to make an academic career out of this type of reading (And there are thousands of worthy examples: I can't imagine reading "Gravity's Rainbow" without Fowler's guide, and Umberto Eco's analysis of "Sylvie"'s complex plot is impressive and wonderful), there is a very good reason that academia should do a great deal of context-based readings. The reason is that universities are practically the only place that such analysis can be done. The requirements of historical research demand a well-stocked library and significant time devoted to such a task is great. Close reading of course requires much time as well, but it is much lower than the concentration required to pore over programs from Yeats' Abbey Theater (for an example). Your preferred method of reading, however, flourishes outside the academy, especially on the internet. I read your blog because I find a lot of good interpretation of aesthetic elements in it and interesting discussion of other critics ideas. But there are hundreds of good blogs like yours. I feel as if "aesthetic analysis and close reading" are the dominant form of criticism today. The academy seems cloistered because it is doing what can only be done in the academy. Yes, this is a bit of ivory towerdom, but that is the nature of the beast. And if the university were to suddenly blink out of existence I am sure that historical research would continue, but it would be much more difficult.

The problem of faddish theories in the academy can be solved no more than the problem of fads in publishing (Latin American fantastic writers anyone? It seems as if this one resurges once every decade). Or of fads in anything. It is human to find the new exciting.

And regarding my quotations of your blog, I was just being snarky and having a bit of fun.

I do have a question for you. I admit in a lot of literature the aesthetics are far enough removed from context as to allow for your preferred aesthetics-concentrated approach. For example, it is quite possible and very enjoyable to study the aesthetics of "Dubliners" without recourse to context or politics, even though these informed Joyce greatly in his intentions for the novel. (If you like Irish history at all and are interested in the historical links in Joyce's stories I recommend Torciana's "Backgrounds for Joyce's Dubliners." Yes, Torchiana's readings are occasionally very far fetched, but his brilliance and his love of literature and historical research are apparent throughout it. I think it is a good example of how the reading of literature in cultural and historical context does not "flatten" anything, but rather makes it more exciting. At least for me, it makes me want to not only study more Irish literature, but also Irish history and language. That is what I mean when I say there is much more enthusiasm and excitement for literature in the academy than I think you give credit to.)

Sorry for that long parenthesis. Returning to my question: But in much literature the aesthetic effects are intended to be read in the light of context, and even theory. For example, many of Gary Snyder's poems** are not only influenced by Zen aesthetics, but also by Japanese literary theory. It often isn't possible to get what Snyder is trying to do unless you are either already knowledgeable with Japanese literature or are willing to do research. Or with Umberto Eco, his novels work aesthetically on two levels. One that is based on immediate aesthetic appreciation and the other that relies on a great deal of "nerdiness" (referencing my earlier division). With something like "Finnegan's Wake" or "The Cantos" or "The Divine Comedy" or "The 2nd Shepard's Play" or Rabelais or Swift this phenomena only intensifies. However, I think there is a place for these works in your critical framework.

But then there are the works that seem to lie completely outside of your aesthetic criticism, like the novels of Upton Sinclair or the plays of Shaw or Brecht. Here, the aesthetic appreciation usually exists as an effect of the political message. It seems to me that this type of literature, and there is a lot of it and it is often quite enjoyable, can't be discussed in the way you prefer. Perhaps 200 years from now people will read Brecht with only aesthetics in the same way many read "The Aeneid" or "Gulliver's Travels" today with aesthetics first and politics later, despite being originally conceived to work to other way around. There will always be political literature, and examples prove that even propaganda can be very aesthetically pleasing. So, after much longwindedness my question - How do you respond to this type of literature?

**Earlier you spoke of literature that speaks to you and I said that literature doesn't speak to me. However, if by "speaks to me" you meant that a work seems to somehow occupy a spot in your mind as if it were meant to be there. That it works on the same wavelength as your thoughts, then there is plenty of literature that "speaks to me." Gary Snyder's poems are one example. So does the criticism of Umberto Eco. Joyce's "Portrait" does as well (Although I like "Ulysses" and "Dubliners" much better, even though they do not "speak to me"). Italo Calvino and Stanislaw Lem, too. Octavio Paz... I may have written off your diction as pseudo-mystical presumptuously.

[Chris]

Thucydides may very well be the equal of Virgil. I guess what I was suggesting was that they are not equivalent. But to answer the question more directly, I suppose that the substantive difference is that if the content of Thucydides' history is found to be faulty -- given that his stature and significance is derived in large part from his reputation for the development of a historiographic approach that prized analysis and accuracy -- then it loses a significant part of its value. If the content of Virgil's poetry is inaccurate historically -- which surely it is -- its value (for better or worse) is unaltered. Thucydides was irritated enough by Herodotus' "literary" flourishes to perhaps agree with this.

[Dan Green]

But of course in departments of Religious Studies, the Bible isn't being treated as literature, or at least not primarily. It's being treated as a sacred text, or what many people regard as a sacred text, and scholars in this department are indeed interesed in knowledge about such a text, perhaps even more importantly, about why so many do treat it as sacred. "Bible as Literature" is--or used to be--in the English department.

"A poem is a work of art. It is also a historical artifact."

This is certainly true. But if it isn't a work of art first, I can't see its reason for being (except for its future value to scholars of historical artifacts). Its reason for being isn't just suppelmented in modern literary study by study of its secondary values, the latter has more or less replaced the former altogether.

"This is analysis of literature as a cultural object"

No, it's analysis of book reviewing as a cultural practice. I've never said that I wanted to do only close readings of texts on this blog. Are you saying that in order to believe that aesthetic analysis should be at the forefront of literary study I must only do aesthetic close readings? I do plenty of them, I think, but this blog is one on "Contemporary Literature and Criticism," which covers a fair amount of ground. Am I not allowed to write about the *need* for aesthetic analysis and close reading, or about other critical issues?

[ElAleph]

Quite a lot of the Bible is not just analogous to literature, it is a work of literature. Especially most of the Old Testament. That you don't think so is surprising. So should Psalms be off-limits because it is poetry? Or does everything from Joshua to 2 Chronicles (excluding Ruth) occupy a special status apart from something like the letters of Paul because its an epic?

Your statement "poems and novels are works of art" is true. But the assumption you are making is that art is special, set apart and greater. A sanctum sanctorum not be be touched except in certain ways. And one must not misuse the holy term literary. This is why I somewhat-jokingly have identified religion with aestheticism. Personally, I find this attitude demeaning to math, science, historical documents, philosophy, non-literary nonfiction, politics, sex, sports, and, indeed, life itself.

Earlier Chris asked me if treating literature as I prefer to is a kind of "flattening" out. In contrast to the bloated sense of worth the aesthetes give to it, I should hope it is. Why, Chris, should not Thucydides be the equal of Virgil? Of course they are doing different things, but to scorn history and exalt propaganda (Virgil is probably not the aesthete's best example of great literature, great literature though it is) is baseless, except as an issue of personal taste and that has little place in research.

You often make the assumption that treating literature as a historical artifact like potsherds means that you treat it in the same way as potsherds. Of course not! A potsherd is a piece of a pot, and often part of a work of art. It is also a historical artifact. A poem is a work of art. It is also a historical artifact. To ignore either side will damn any attempt at research. Look at my sloppy sketch of Fielding's politics and aesthetics in my first post. Did I pretend that "Tom Jones" wasn't a work of art? No. I addressed the aesthetics of the work as part of my argument.

Seriously, Plato was not producing literary criticism, Dan? He was adressing the primary aesthetic and psychological effects of poetry on people and found that this effect is detrimental to his just polis.

Actually, looking back at the posts on your blog, I don't think you actually practice what your preach (hey! more religious metaphor!). Here are some quotes that, according to your narrow definition, don't seem to be "literary study" at all:

-"I am somewhat uncomfortable with Dewey's use of terms like "congenial" and "enjoyed experience." They come too close to suggesting that art is an escape, a reduction of experience as transformed by art to the peaceful and the happy when in fact (as Dewey frequently acknowledged) experience as rendered in and through art can be violent and disturbing..."

This is a moral judgment, like Plato's and Aristotle's (or Luakcs').

-"Both the sensationalism and the emphasis on biography, as well as "the fulsome but often strangely detached praise," to be found in the reviews of Némirovsky’s unfinished novel are entirely representative of the kind of attention works of fiction especially are accorded in newspaper book sections. Only books that will satisfy readers' desire for "quality," or that can be made to seem such through the reviewer's hyped-up language, are reviewed in the first place. Appropriate commentary then becomes an issue of finding the right kind of perfunctory praise, in some cases an emphasis on the "sensational copy" that occasionally accompanies this or that book.
I partially blame academic criticism for the dismal state of generalist book reviewing. First the wholesale retreat of criticism behind the walls of academe and then the virtual abandonment of text-based literary criticism for the treatment of literary texts as occasions for social, historical, and theoretical analysis left serious readers with few other organs of literary discussion than newspapers and a handful of magazines. "

This is analysis of literature as a cultural object like what is done in cultural studies, which is what you ironically condemn in the very passage. It also contains moral judgment.

-"I disagree with Andy only in that I don't think print litmags attract "higher-quality readers." They attract readers who will never get over a bias toward print, perhaps, or those who prefer their texts to be accompanied by a nominal amount of gloss (with most literary magazines, very nominal), but these aren't necessarily more attentive or intelligent readers. That print magazines might still have some fetish appeal and that they are often more convenient--although I'm not sure how many beachgoers are lugging around literary magazines--are plausible enough explanations, however, and, with Andy, I question whether this makes them inherently valuable enough for us to regret their impendng demise."

A very good analysis of the "fetish appeal" of print.

[Dan Green]

If you think works of literature are analogous to the Bible, then I guess you would treat them as essentially objects of knowledge. I don't think of them in that way, and "knowledge" in the abstract is the last thing I want from them.

I can't see anything analogous between thinking the Bible literally true and thinking that poems and novels are works of art.

[ElAleph]

Tell man, Dan, do you believe that historical, linguistic, or any other contextual based Biblical criticism should exist in Religion departments? Or should Religion departments be dissolved as well and taken over by others?

Those who believe the Bible to be literally true certainly think so, and think that such criticism is an attack on the true meaning and value of the Book.

But a Religion department at a secular school (and also at most religious universities in addition to believer's Theology) doesn't follow along with how most people read the Bible (nor should it) but takes as its study how the Bible exists as a historical, cultural, linguistic, philosophical document. I don't see how English departments should be any different.

[Dan Green]

"share an unlikely kinship with the smarmy guys in loud suits who long ago caused me to stop watching television on Sunday mornings."

Bullshit. This inane analogy is only an easy substitute for the "thinking" whose absense you decry.

[J.]

As Martin Bernal showed with the publication of Black Athena, it is heresy to expose the underlying politics of a privileged perspective. I am reminded of angry, denuded Egyptologists crying over how Bernal took a perfectly pure, innocent discipline and ruined it with his..his...his..agenda! Today nearly all go on as though postmodernism has not ocurred, hungry for yesterday's fascism. Of course all perspectives are not equal and the best critics cannot be easily praised or dismissed as "formalist," "marxist," "deconstructionist" or whatever. There are simply great minds and everyone else. What's missing from the study of literature in academia is original thinking. Instead of discourse we get cultural hegemony. It's not that different from the publishing world. Old prejudices are continually replaced with new ones and you end up with a mob of zombies, schleppers. Imagine if Kenneth Burke, Jacques Derrida, Viktor Shklovsky, and Frederic Jameson occupied the same literature department. Or don't. People who think that there is one right way to study literature and that this way should be the only one implemented in a literature department (otherwise literature departments should be done away with altogether) share an unlikely kinship with the smarmy guys in loud suits who long ago caused me to stop watching television on Sunday mornings.

[Dan Green]

In Plato's case, no, he isn't doing "literary study," he's doing moralistic condemnation. That he might sound a lot like Lukacs is certainly not in his favor. Aristotle has a better claim to being a literary critic, although in praising the effects of catharsis he is also engaged in moral instruction rather than criticism per se.

There are various ways to value literature and art, but to maintain that what's literary and artistic about them is the least important--bordering on unimportant-- again just strikes me as weird.

[ElAleph]

Jacob, I deliberately twisted and "crudely conflated" your words for the purpose of mockery. I find statements like "strange creatures that we are, always begging for some larger purpose (the "great tradition" of philosophers and archeologists)--and thus missing that which is possible" to be silly and quite religious. Just because you reject the "great tradition," as you call it, does not mean you do not have a view of literature that is deeply religious in its reverence. Your latest posts confirm this. Apparently literature serves as a "solace" for you and reminds you of your "mortality." It is "essential to the contradictions that make us human." These statements are as religious as the Lord's Prayer, or the nembutsu if you prefer. Everything is there: ethics, metaphysics, devotion, moksa (since you object to my use of the word soteriology), eschatology ("collective suicide"). And would I be correct to go so far as to say that the reading of literature occupies a position in your life much like that of a ritual?

And Jacob, you are being very insulting and increasingly nonsensical.

To summarize the real discussion going on here, the argument I have with the aesthetes is:

1. The assertion that aesthetics can be separated from the context of art. I am aware of no artist whose aesthetic choices are not determined, both deliberately and subconsciously, by her cultural context. It is foolish to think, as Dan seems to, that these context-based readings are a current fad of literary studies, when in fact it the oldest approach. Plato's moralistic condemnation of poetry and music in "The Republic" is based on the effect these arts have on society. Sounds a lot like Lukacs, doesn't it? In the "Poetics," it seems as if Aristotle is talking about aesthetics, and he usually is, especially when compared to Plato, when he puts forward the ideas of mimesis and catharsis, but Aristotle's purpose in praising catharsis is that when it is shared by a community it has a beneficial effect on the virtue of the city-state. He also engages in historical criticism when he proposes that comedy originated in the ritual phallic processions of Dionysus.

According to Dan, however, neither of these two rather obscure figures are doing "'liteary study' as it was initially conceived [sic]." And in contrast to LML, they are putting aesthetics to political ends, not vice-versa.

2. The anti-academia sentiment. (see number 1)

3. The ridiculous assertion/assumption that there is only one way to love or enjoy literature. Bah!

[Jacob Russell]

You see, you miss the "seeming" paradox (no paradox, no contradiction):that to record what doesn't last, and for the reader to recognize it in himself--not as an eternal principal, not as evidence of laws of nature or arifacts of history, but as self-recognition--evidence for Proust's claim that what we read in literature is ourselves, generation to generation--as useless in one generation as in the next for anything we might wish to make of it. It's for lving--and living is nothing beyond the here and now--strange creatures that we are, always begging for some larger purpose (the "great tradition" of philosophers and archiologists like you)--and thus missing that which is possible, not merely longed for, but possible, what no beast (free of the seduction of language) needs to be told.. but we do. There is no transcendence--not even of the intellect--the only overcoming, the only solice art can offer is to remind us of our mortality, and in such a way that we have, for a moment, the courage to accept life without asking for more.

And as a writer, to write as neither pimp nor whore in support of our collective suicide.

[Jacob Russell]

An ability to read.. as in..

liberation. Liberation, as I stated, from FIXED interpretations, to fixed contexts.

You really don't know how to read.

Enough of your straw man projections. You are a type of those who, perceiving disagreement, assume you understand everything in terms of an opposit, a mirror reversal of whatever it it is you hold.. and have so little imagination that you cannot conceive that anyone might have ideas that haven't figured in your own limited conceptual patterns.

I don't agree with you, therefore I must hold to some negative version of whatever you happen to believe.

Failure of intellect, failure of imagination... compounded, and you think you really have something to say about art and literature?

[Jacob Russell]

To treat literature in any capacity requiers the ability to read.

Literature doesn't "save" us.

Maybe, at best... distracts us from our major business of collective sucicide.

What it doesn't do.. or rather, what an aesthetic appreciation doesn't do, is submit to being one more pimp or whore in the process.

No saviours. But, as a writer, better a bullet through my head then serve your masters.

[Jacob Russell]

Reject, not as important human endeavors, but aesthetics, from an aesthetic appreciation of art. A work of art can be BOTH--evidence of history culture, AND something other... perhaps, in your view, less... but nonetheless... essential to the contradictions that make us human.

[Jacob Russell]

You see, ElAleph, you rather crudly conflated ideas I had set in opposition. I explicitly rejected the "great tradition"... the religious, prophetic... and scientific claims to what lasts.

You might look up the word "ephemera."

[Jacob Russell]

It might help to check out Will Buckingham's post on Think Buddha:

http://jacobrussellsbarkingdog.blogspot.com/2009/01/ron-silliman-and-sautrntika-mind.html

... as this was clearly on my mind when I wrote that comment. See my post on Barking Dog on this:

http://www.thinkbuddha.org/article/381/fluidity-and-thought.

You see, you miss the "seeming" paradox (no paradox, no contradiction):that to record what doesn't last, and for the reader to recognize it in himself--not as an eternal principal, not as evidence of laws of nature or artifacts of history, but as self-recognition--evidence for Proust's claim that what we read in literature is ourselves, generation to generation--as useless in one generation as in the next for anything we might wish to make of it. It's for living--and living is nothing beyond the here and now--strange creatures that we are, always begging for some larger purpose (the "great tradition" of philosophers and archeologists)--and thus missing that which is possible, not merely longed for, but possible, what no beast (free of the seduction of language) needs to be told.. but we do. There is no transcendence--not even of the intellect--the only overcoming, the only solace art can offer is to remind us of our mortality, and in such a way that we have, for a moment, the courage to accept life without asking for more.

[Paul]

The linked-to article is no longer appearing in the post, but there does seem to be an anti-literature literature out there, if what is meant by anti-literary is something like "novels that have no relationship to the history of the novel" (like rock music doesn't have much relationship to the history of music, if "music" is understood as classical music). I think of Henry Miller as being like this, maybe Celine, the poetry of Bukowski -- throwing "writing" --the history of writing-- out the window, and making something more like memoirs. And yet not memoirs.

[ElAleph]

Jacob:
1. In my latest post I'm being partly tongue-in-cheek.
2. The Christianity is quite present:

-"a continuing effort of liberation"

-"If we truly have no choice but to assign equal signs (=) between the work and its contexts, we might as well scrap the whole venture and just get on with the business of killing each other." (implying that literature somehow "saves" us and brings peace. If that isn't apotheosis I don't know what is.)

-"We are ephemeral. We don't last. We have inherited a great intellectual tradition of clinging to abstractions that we pretend will bring us to some sort of apotheosis--enduring truths." (Ever read Ecclesiastes? Or Medieval Mystics like Eckhart?)

-" the ephemera of the work of art, that which makes it live, as we live, in a shimmering ever changing and ever vanishing light." (Sounds like the Holy Ghost is giving art its power, perhaps to "speak to" people)

Actually, the anti-abstraction sentiment in your post is more reminiscent of Zen than Christianity, but your diction is not. Either way, it tastes like religion to me. I won't treat literature like a golden calf.

[Chris]

With all respect: There are, perhaps, other open gateways to knowledge, other fertile fields for the development of ideas and theories -- that do not possess what it is that literature, what art, possesses uniquely? Or, to put it another way, is there not a certain flattening that takes place when equating the amphora with The Aeniad? Or Thucydides with Virgil?

It is not "pseudo-mystical" to possess an ear, and to make claims for its abilities. Some people just can't -- well, those of us of a certain age can recall the inadvertent comedy of color television manufacturers selling their wares in TV commercials aimed at people with black-and-white TVs.

[Jacob Russell]

Where you get the Christian soteriological prophecy stuff from what I wrote I have no idea--certainly not from me. My appreciation of literature is quite stripped of such residue. You have rather crudly misread what I presented as opposing stances as though they were the same, as though I were embracing the "great tradition" and its abstract apotheosis rather than explicitly rejecting it!

[ElAleph]

"It's perfectly ok that literature doesn't do much for you, but that anyone who feels this way would want to be a professor of literature seems to me very weird."

You claim to not be the narrow aesthete, but this is about as narrow as it gets. Literature "does" a lot for me, as I consider it an open gate to knowledge and a fertile field for the development of ideas and theories. It probably won't surprise anyone here that I began my academic pursuits with the intention of becoming an archaeologist. Potsherds, like literature, are human artifacts that are quite revelatory of the culture that created it. Is this the original intent of the pot? No, but it would be absurd to say that an archaeologist misuses the pot or that pottery suffers under the critical eyes of the academic.

It is certainly possible to love literature without having literature "speak to you."

Another analogy: One can divorce the aesthetic appreciation of a college football game from the economic realities of the BCS, but to do so is willful ignorance.

That's what you aesthetes are doing - watching football. And don't think that your pseudo-mystical fetishistic reverence for literature isn't mirrored in football as well. Spend a few weeks around Norman and you might hear something like this:

"We are ephemeral. We don't last. We have inherited a great [football] tradition of clinging to [victories] that we [know] will bring us to some sort of apotheosis--enduring [national championships].

Indeed, Jacob frames literature in fully Christian terms, including soteriology, self-effacement, prophecy (speak to you), and morality. Which leads me to my third analogy. Aesthetes are the true believers, the Feenomanites, if you are familiar with Dennet. Academics are the Feenomanists, agnostics who record and categorize the occult knowledge of the Feenomanites, thus producing anthropological knowledge.

The most interesting thing about this literary religion is that every participant seems to be a prophet, claiming that his god "speaks to him."

I apologize for any offense I have caused to the honorable followers of Feenoman.

[Jacob Russell]

We are ephemeral. We don't last. We have inherited a great intellectual tradition of clinging to abstractions that we pretend will bring us to some sort of apotheosis--enduring truths. It isn't that the study of these abstractions is dull, but that they are abstractions and they are noting like us. You are right--aesthetics addresses our response to what is ephemeral, as we are. Notice the contradiction: it's leaving behind those contextually rooted abstractions that enable us us to experience the work beyond the closure of it's historical period... aesthetics concerns itself with what makes that possible, asking: what is it about us, about oursevles, our ephemeral being touching on the ephemera of the work of art, that which makes it live, as we live, in a shimmering ever changing and ever vanishing light.

[Dan Green]

No, the New Critics created the expectation that "approach" is everything. Now literary study is essentially nothing but the free flow of new approaches.

"I personally don't find much in literature that 'speaks to me.'"

This to me sums up the current state of literary study. It is dominated by those to whom "literature doesn't speak." It's perfectly ok that literature doesn't do much for you, but that anyone who feels this way would want to be a professor of literature seems to me very weird.

[ElAleph]

Steven: Batman? What? I'm not sure what your asking. Is there someone else with this same moniker?

"very dull stage production of the critic/scholar's id"

It's not always dull. And it's often very informative. Even a Marxist critique that throws objectivity out of the window and pushes for specific political ends typically contains a lot of good historical research and theory. And amongst the best Marxists the political bias is pretty thought-provoking as well. I find it hard to believe that anyone can read Jameson and not see that.

Dan: The problem with the New Critics is that they created the expectation that academic criticism should be literary and aesthetically-driven. That type of approach cannot last long in the academy, and it didn't. But there are those outside and inside the academy that seem to expect professors to be Eliot.

"your aesthetic sensibilities have become extremely coarsened"

No, I just find that pursuing knowledge and developing ideas or a theory are greater and far less ephemeral pleasures than the aesthetic appreciation of literature.

"literature's ability to elude the limits of its historical moment"

Considered in cultural context, ideas like this are quite interesting, but I personally don't find much in literature that "speaks to me." There are cases of being emotionally moved, like Joyce's "Araby" or the end of "Lawrence of Arabia," but do they speak to me? Not really. What invariably gets the juices flowing is the academic approach that is disparaged as dull, dry, mental masturbation. The stereotype of the dull academician is only true from an anti-intellectual viewpoint. I find there to be much enthusiasm in the academy. Yeah, in one sense the literature/math/economics/art history professor is the dullest guy in town, but (more often than you know) he loves his subject and his approach to it.

[LML]

Oops, "mystery plays." The typo is indeed indicative of a larger ignorance about the genre. I'm glad somebody's out there reading them, though.

[LML]

EA: My emphasis on the novel is a result of this post, and Dan's blog generally, being primarily about that particular art form.

As far as what's "worth reading," okay, that could be clarified. I mean literature that speaks to me across contexts peculiar to the historical conditions prevailing at the time of its composition. All historical moments indeed end, but until the last moment has come, "literature" will be constituted of those texts that speak across individual moments. You're right, medieval morality plays for the most part haven't made that leap. Your study of the Shepherd's Play sounds primarily historical to me. I don't begrudge you that study. I am objecting to your contention that "aesthetic" issues are narrower than the kinds of context-dependent readings of literature that you are interested in performing. As Jacob Russell says, real aesthetic appreciation of a text takes all such contextual matters into consideration. I furthermore agree with Jacob's statements about literature's ability to elude the limits of its historical moment. Is it an act of faith to believe that literature can do this? Maybe so, and I'll plead guilty to that form of faith, but as you say, empirical evidence exists: many people outside the field of Classics continue to be moved by Homer.

[Steven Augustine]

ElAl:

Btw, when did you start using this pseudonym? Are you doing undercover research for your next cross-posting over at T. V. ? Or is this just a kinky, Batman-inspired move..?

[Dan Green]

I myself find the mystery plays quite aesthetically compelling, as I also do the Metaphysical poets, Restoration comedy, and Milton, among the other pre-19th century literature (just sticking to English literature) you find disposable. Either I'm a freak of nature or your aesthetic sensibilities have become extremely coarsened through your fixation on your "anti-literary things."

I actually agree that the current mess that is literary study can be traced back to the New Critics, although their culpability is unwitting. As I've discussed in several previous posts on this blog, their academicization of literary criticism inevitably led to the parade of ever newer "approaches" to literary "scholarship" that's gotten us where we are. They would, of course, be appalled that their efforts have ultimately led to the ejection of literature from literary study, but history plays cruel jokes.

[Steven Augustine]

ElAleph:

" 'We have drifted far from the territory of books and deep into the psychology of criticism.'

It sounds like a good place to be to me, but I'm sure you disagree."

To the extent that literary art therefore shrinks to the dimensions of a prop in the very dull stage production of the critic/scholar's id: yes. I disagree.

[ElAleph]

LML: "novel worth reading"

I can't even try to guess what is meant by "worth reading." But your emphasis on the novel is telling and reminiscent of James Wood. Why not Medieval mystery plays? Their "historical moment has passed" and I don't think there are many (or any) who read them for their "aesthetic ends." You might say they aren't "worth reading" then, but I find the 2nd Shepherd's play's deliberate misuse of Biblical typology to be a quite worthy subject of study. The play can even be quite funny (an aesthetic reaction), but only in its cultural context.

Most pre-19th century literature isn't (and can't be) read in your aesthetic way. Sure, there are major exceptions: Shakespeare and Homer and other so-called giants. But all historical moments will pass, including the current one that has produced the interesting ideas of Sebald and Bolano. It is the historical moments that interest me (among other anti-literary things). If you care about other things, I have no problem. But too often my natural approach (yes, natural, this is how I've always usually approached literature, even though the use of theory and the like are not natural) to literature is denigrated as a "perversion." This all reminds me of a more sophisticated version of those times in high school where a "poetry-lover" asserts that scansion and analysis ruins the poem. I just don't get it.

Dan: The answer is that English Departments are the place where such things are done. Although I agree that Cultural Studies holds promise for these approaches to literature, at the moment Cultural Studies tends to focus on contemporary, PoMo culture and minority -isms, so most literature scholars still need to be part of English departments. In my opinion you can blame the misconceptions about literary studies and the existence of literature as as separate department even though it uses the methods of other departments on the New Critics. They were the ones who needed literature as a separate department not the Marxists, feminists, psychoanalysts, etc.

But the reality is that English departments are an intrinsic part of current university structure, for the reasons I have said in this post and others. It may be more rational to reorganize the university (Linguistics shouldn't really be in English either, as its placement often precludes conversation with CS and Psych, which are more important than English for the discipline). But restructuring is pretty much out of the question without some strong impetus. Its like trying to change the BCS. Change will come someday, but all we can really do is wait.

[Jacob Russell]

The question posed by the "horrors of the 20th century" is whether it is possible for literature to be more (and/or other) than ideology and propaganda, that is, cultureal weapons in our march toward mutual suicide.

That it will be put to such use is inevitable--the risk and the hope is that literature (let me broaden this to include the art in all its forms) cannot be reduced to its uses. That is what it means to value aesthetic understanding, which is not another means of reduction, but a continuing effort of liberation, over studying art as "something else". Aesthetic understanding doesn't exclude the many contexts that inform a work, historical, political, religious, philosophical, but it does not fix the experience to them. If we truly have no choice but to assign equal signs (=) between the work and its contexts, we might as well scrap the whole venture and just get on with the business of killing each other.

[Dan Green]

EA: Anyone can do anything he/she wants with literature, of course. But if someone called an English professor wants to use literature in historical or psychological analysis, I'm not clear why that professor isn't a history or psychology professor. The study of literature's secondary and tertiary effects has increasingly been subsumed under the title "Cultural Studies," and a department of Cultural Studies could certainly exist, especially if its members acknowledged they're not doing "liteary study" as it was initially conceived.

Opposed is too strong a word. Uninterested.

[LML]

The common feature in Bolano's and Sebald's work is a preoccupation with rehabilitating literature. Both writers seem to have taken seriously the idea that the horrors of the 20th century call into question the premises of literature. Both are besotted, nevertheless, with literature. They write out of political reality and toward literary possibility, all the while deeply skeptical that literature is worth the trouble. Both are contemptuous of other writers who proceed as though the playing field hasn't changed, and both are talented enough to remake old forms. This ability is what makes them important. They offer a specifically literary kind of possibility that seemed unavailable, lost to history.

This is not a denial of the role of politics in the novel; it's simply, as Dan says, evidence that any novel worth reading once its historical moment has passed will marshal its politics to aesthetic ends.

[ElAleph]

"'Communications skills' can be acquired by other means than studying literature."

Sure, but if literary study is a proven method of teaching them, and it is, then I don't see why it is of "almost no value." An "indirect and intangible value" is still a value.

Was I correct in assuming that you think historians and psychologists are warranted in studying literature, but if someone is called an English professor, then hands off!? I think that position places too much emphasis on names and categorization. Just because the computer scientist's work can be reduced to physics does not mean that computer science should not be a separate discipline. I argue the same in relation to the work of a historical literary critic. What he is doing is certainly more historical than literary at the core, but the study of literature, even from a science or social science approach, requires set of skills that is not taught in other academic departments. Do you think literature would somehow be bettered if other departments each opened up a division of literature and then literary scholars changed their titles to "Associate Professor of History and Literature" or "Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Literature?"

Or are you actually opposed to any approach to literature except the aesthetic one?

[Dan Green]

I do think the teaching of writing could be handled in some kind of comp/rhet department, although I am becoming increasingly dubious about the value of writing courses as well.

I don't think that with the elimination of what is still called "literary study" the "value of an English Literature major to most students would be greatly lessened" because it already has almost no value. "Communications skills" can be acquired by other means than studying literature.

Many English majors undoubtedly do regard their course of study as valuable, especially in retrospect, but I would guess it's an indirect and intangible value, not one that is immediately remunerative.

[Jacob Russell]

Wenclas,

Do you wave your bloody red shirt at the academy because you want to break through the conformity of the establishment... or because you believe there's some virtue in being intellectually incurious?

That's probably a rhetorical question...

[ElAleph]

My one-liner at the end of my post was just that, Steven. I wanted something snippy at the end of my long-winded post. Please don't take it too seriously, I regret making it.

"The actual formula goes something like: the total of possible books times the total of possible readers times total possible moods and re-readings = legitimate possible variations of interpretation."

I don't disagree. Despite your exaggerations (unless you count minor, imperceptible differences in interpretations as different interpretations) I say that those interpretations are one of the objects of literary scholarly study. Why does x-group or x-critic interpret a work in x-way?

And Dan, are you saying that what university literature departments do is itself wrong (at least superficially an anti-intellectual position) or that what they do should be subsumed under history, sociology, psychology, philosophy, religion, economics etc. departments? If the latter, which I am assuming is your position, my answer is that although that may be possible and sensible as far as research on literature is concerned, it would be disastrous. This is because of the position literature professors have in undergraduate pedagogy. The teaching of writing, from freshman comp to senior Shakespeare, is the primary pedagogical purpose for English departments at most state schools, and even at many liberal arts schools. Historians, psychologists and the like do not have any training in composition, whereas at most schools literature scholars do.

Making composition teaching the job of a new rhet/comp department would solve that problem but create another (And would only work in those few universities large and well-funded enough to have a full division of rhet/comp people rather than one or two). If this were to happen, the value of an English Literature major to most students would be greatly lessened. Currently English majors from good schools often have an easier time finding jobs than marketing majors competing for the same openings, because industry trusts, based on their experiences, that English majors can capably handle writing. And while those English students are learning how to read and write, they are also getting to study literature, often aesthetically.

"We have drifted far from the territory of books and deep into the psychology of criticism."

It sounds like a good place to be to me, but I'm sure you disagree.

"Only what the great novelists presented us and hooked us-- at least me-- on literature."

One of my points is that there are a significant number of people who got hooked on literature because of its relation to history or philosophy, etc. (and politics, although I personally know less of these than one would expect) and not solely (though always some) for aesthetic reasons. What I don't understand is the hostility towards these readings (any hostility of my own, perceived or real, I apologize for. It is not intended).

Perhaps it just comes down to two types of people: the artist and the nerd. You're never going to get the artist to understand the pleasures of research and applying a theory to discover something about the way literature works in society or psychologically. And you're never going to get the nerd to understand why someone would read a book simply (there is my bias showing) for immediate pleasures, whether just as entertainment or in a more thoughtful manner like James Wood or the readers of this blog.

[Dan Green]

"hermeneutics"

I was, of course, quoting Josh Corey's use of the term (and he himself seems to be using it in invisible quotation marks, as a comment on the way the term was used in "Theory").

[King Wenclas]

It's pretty humorous to have Mr. Green in the position of being "anti-academia," when every one of his posts reeks of the academy. Are you all kidding yourselves? The moment a general reader sees the word "hermeneutics" he'll start snoozing.
Where's the STUFF of literature? Drama, ideas, action, thunder, expressed in a coherent manner? (Only what the great novelists presented us and hooked us-- at least me-- on literature.)
Strange, I can't find it anywhere.

[Dan Green]

"But it is the purpose of the university to produce knowledge, not to foster appreciation."

I agree. Which is why, in retrospect, I think it was a mistake to bring the study of literature--as literature, as a "discipline" in and of itself--into the academic curriculum in the first place, and why I also think the best thing that could happen to literature is that it now be removed.

[Steven Augustine]

To write "To read literature aesthetically is to read literature without curiosity" is no less strange than it is risibly peremptory (and wrong). The actual formula goes something like: the total of possible books times the total of possible readers times total possible moods and re-readings = legitimate possible variations of interpretation. Systematize that at your (medieval-theologian-style) peril.

Also: Literature enjoyed as Art (at the most recondite edge of the word) and Literature enjoyed as Entertainment (defined as the virtual escape The People need after a long, hard day of Reality) are very different things, even (or esp.)when the same text is in use in both cases. These arguments often strike me as being about Japanese monoglots shouting from one side and French monoglots on the other.

We have drifted far from the territory of books and deep into the psychology of criticism.