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November 11, 2008
What He Said
RIP John Leonard. Lots of appreciations elsewhere to which I have nothing useful to add, except to direct you to this Nation essay from 2000, which ought to be read by all working critics and reporters and the people who edit them:
I like to think of myself as having published in the New York Review, The New Statesman, the Yale Review and Tikkun. But there was also TV Guide.
This sounds less careerist than sluttish. It is, however, a sluttishness probably to be expected of someone who had to make a living after he discovered that the novels he reviewed were a lot better than the novels he wrote. We may belong to what the poet Paul Valéry called "the delirious professions"--by which Valéry meant "all those trades whose main tool is one's opinion of one's self, and whose raw material is the opinion others have of you"--but reporters, critics and "cultural journalists," no less than publicists, are caged birds in a corporate canary-cage. Looking back, I see what I required of my employers was that they cherish my every word and leave me alone. If I understand what Warren Beatty was trying to tell us in the movie Reds, it is that John Reed only soured on the Russian Revolution after they fucked with his copy.
Exactly.
Posted at 02:28 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
November 03, 2008
It's Alive! (Or, Percy's Purple Prose)
I've just had the pleasure of writing about the work of Charles Robinson, a textual scholar at the University of Delaware. Working closely with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein notebooks in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, Robinson has given us a new edition that strips out Percy Shelley's edits, emendations, and "improvements." And boy, are some of them purple:
In Mary's early version of the monster's final speech, for example, he looks forward to his death with these words: "I shall ascend my pile triumphantly & the flame that consumes my body will give rest & blessings to my mind." In Percy's version, the line becomes: "I shall ascend my funeral pile triumphantly, and exult in the agony of the torturing flames. The light of that conflagration will fade away; my ashes will be swept into the sea by the winds. My spirit will sleep in peace; or if it thinks, it will not surely think thus. Farewell."
I know which version I prefer. Hint: It's not Percy's.
Robinson's new edition could help quiet down a debate that's been raging since the novel was published, anonymously, in 1818: Did Mary Shelley really write Frankenstein? There are a few holdouts who argue that she couldn't have. (See Maud Newton's thoughts on how that point of view "really chaps my ass.")
Better question, and the one most scholars ask: Just how much of Frankenstein did Mary Shelley write? As I ask in the article,
How much of a participant was Mary Shelley's better half? Should Percy be considered a co-creator of her masterpiece? Was he a co-opter of her genius? Was he Mary's Svengali, her Max Perkins, or merely a good copy editor?
Robinson firmly believes that Mary wrote the book:
"There's no evidence that Percy is responsible for the conception of this novel or even the early drafting of it," he says. "All the evidence that we have is that he comes in at this intermediate stage and offers his editorial advice and changes, and comes in at the fair-copy stage and offers some melodramatic prose for the final version of the scene in the polar regions."
One of the things I find coolest about the kind of dogged textual work Robinson does is that it reminds us of the necessary thrill of working with original manuscripts. Digital copies are wonderful things, especially for scholars who can't hop on a plane and travel to, say, the Bodleian--but sometimes there's no substitute for the original.
For Robinson, there's a larger lesson to be drawn from his toil. "For this kind of close editorial work, the manuscript is absolutely essential." As a textual editor, he has worked his way through what he calls "a kind of stemma or sequence" of Frankenstein manuscript materials: high-resolution, black-and-white photographs of the manuscripts; high-quality digital images; and original manuscript pages.
"Digitals provide new opportunities for handwriting analysis, but it's only in the originals that you can see the exact shade or color of the ink," Robinson explains. "It's the manuscript itself that provides the best evidence."
Posted at 02:55 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 24, 2008
DFW's Syllabus
One of David Foster Wallace's students has posted a copy of the syllabus Wallace used to teach an undergrad course on "Literary Interpretation." The document makes more honest literary sense than most of the overbearing, over-reaching tributes we've had thrown at us since Wallace's suicide:
The goals of this section of E67 are to survey certain important forms of modern literature—short stories, novels, poems—and to introduce you to some techniques for achieving a critical appreciation of literary art. "Critical appreciation" means having smart, sophisticated reasons for liking whatever literature you like, and being able to articulate those reasons to other people, especially in writing. Vital for critical appreciation is the ability to "interpret" a piece of literature, which basically means coming up with a cogent, interesting account of what a piece of lit means, what it's trying to do to/for the reader, what technical choices the author's made in order to achieve the effects she wants, and so on. As you can probably anticipate, the whole thing gets very complicated and abstract and hard, which is one reason why entire college departments are devoted to studying and interpreting literature.
(Via.)
More tales of Wallace as a teacher here and here.
Posted at 10:33 AM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 22, 2008
Note to NYTBR Editors
Surprise us sometime by not putting Philip Roth's latest on the cover of the section. It would be okay. Really.
(For yesterday's section, I'd have gone with either the review of Asne Seierstad's The Angel of Grozny or the review of Marilynne Robinson's Home. Either would have been a more refreshing choice than Indigation.)
Posted at 08:15 AM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
September 16, 2008
Hey, Short Stack!
My former colleagues over at the Washington Post Book World are now blogging daily. Check it.
Posted at 01:50 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 26, 2008
Enough of This Anecdotage!
During my stint as a contributing editor at Book World, the phrase "minor novelist" used to get thrown around once in a while. I always hated it: It's patronizing, and it's almost always used by people who will never get around to writing a novel at all. (Though of course if they did it would be anything but minor.)
After reading a review in the Aug. 1 TLS, though, I'd like to suggest that the phrase "minor memoirist" needs to go into wider circulation, given what the publishing industry has been dishing out. Here's A.N. Wilson (in no sense a minor writer) taking the lash to Jeremy Lewis's Grub Street Irregular:
But in this account of how the author "plumped" for publishing, worked in a minor capacity for a number of firms, and then helped out in an editorial capacity at several small magazines, the reader is left wondering whether anything interesting is going to happen and I may as well spoil it for you by saying that it doesn't. At one point, attending a seminar on the art of biography, the author is sharply upbraided by Roy Foster, who tells him, "I think, Jeremy, that we’ve had enough of this anecdotage."
Exactly.
Posted at 12:58 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
August 14, 2008
Mapping Irish-American Lit, cont.
Not long ago, I wrote a story for the Chronicle Review on "literary geospaces," profiling two digital humanists who are using technologies like Google Earth to see literary history in fresh ways. One of the scholars I wrote about, Matthew Jockers of Stanford, has posted more about his work on his blog, describing the bigger picture--
As long ago as 1997, my research had shown that the Irish experience in America was largely determined by place. It's true, of course, that the time of immigration to the U.S. was important in coloring the Irish experience: were these pre-famine immigrants, famine refugees, or the 1980's so-called "commuter Irish." But I discovered that equally important to chronology was place and the business of where the immigrants settled. For my research, I divided the country up into a number of regions (Midwest, mountain, southwest, pacific. . .) and each one of these regions turned out to have a distinct "brand" of Irish-American writing. Generally speaking, though, the further west we go the more likely we are to find writers describing the Irish-American experience in positive terms.
--and how he built a bibliographic database of IA lit that he turned into a "Google Earth mash-up." You can catch a QuickTime video of the mash-up here.
Posted at 08:17 AM in Lit Critin Net Life | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 29, 2008
Finally, somebody with something sensible to say about the LATBR and its devolution from stand-alone section to part of the culture pages. More reasonableness here. And the NBCC, after a spate of the usual hand-wringing, actually did a mini-interview with LATBR editor David Ulin and learned a couple of reassuring things (what's NOT going away, in other words). Was that so hard?
If you want more, you can find an editor's note from Ulin to LAT readers here.
Meanwhile, I am resisting the impulse to read this as ironic:
Having some standards seems more and more important in a time when the traditional arts have lost a bit of their prestige, some of their audience, and all of their monopoly on perceived quality. As silly as the chaste, Victorian tones of the literary and high culture worlds could be in their heyday, we need a certain amount of seriousness in our lives. At least I do. If the marketplace is left entirely unfettered, we'll lose a lot of what we consider valuable -- not just J.S. Bach and John Coltrane but shows such as "Deadwood" and nonchain bookstores.
The LAT running a defense of "a certain amount of seriousnes in our lives" the same week it downsizes its book coverage? Interesting. Then again, much of the article is a defense of high-middle-lowbrow mashups. It's all good, right?
Right.
Posted at 08:44 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (3)
March 24, 2008
Did He or Didn't He?
Did Coleridge translate Goethe's Faust? Two Romanticists say yes. Others say no. Passionate debate ensues. I've written about the devilish kerfluffle here. As one of my sources told me, "Coleridgeans are not known for their unanimity."
Posted at 04:37 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 19, 2008
Mixing It Up With the Post-Avant
I have been accused, from time to time, of being a mixer. My husband likes to remind me of the time that I posted a perfectly innocent question--about the pros and cons of circumcision--to a parenting listserv. Before long, the pro- and anti- camps were hurling accusations of genital mutilation and cultural imperialism at each other. Let's just say it was an eye-opener.
Another question of mine, this one about what "post-avant" really means, had a similar match-meets-powder-keg effect not long ago. You can read the question here (scroll to the bottom) on the Chronicle's Footnoted blog, the answer here ("Who You Callin' Post Avant?"), and reaction here. As one commenter wrote, "Damn, y'all. It's like Knots Landing in here. Somebody, call Wallace Stevens!"
Posted at 09:17 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 11, 2008
All the World's a (Virtual) Stage
If you're reading one of the Bard's plays, you can now join the global crowd--online--via Shakespeare's Global Globe, the brainchild of an English professor at Carnegie Mellon. (Love the orbis-mundi URL.) The Chronicle's Wired Campus blog has some background.
As of 12:59 p.m. EST, 108 people are reading Shakespeare. Well, 108 people have logged on to report that they're reading Shakespeare.
Posted at 12:53 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 09, 2008
Another Plea to Lit Journos
If you find yourself reviewing James Wood's new book, please don't invoke Edmund Wilson in your lead. Trust me. It's been done.
Thanks.
(More Woodiana here, if you must.)
Posted at 08:05 PM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)
February 05, 2008
A Plea to Literary Journalists
Please stop profiling and otherwise making a fuss over James Wood. I hear he's good. I hear he has a new book out ("an Olympian critic points out where major-league talents are getting it wrong," the Independent says). I understand he likes to spend time with his children. Enough said.
Posted at 10:40 AM in Lit Crit | Permalink | Comments (0)