theatlantic.com/doc/200107/myers
Just wanted to open up a thread disscussing the article rainey posted a bit more in detail as I thought the article raised some deep, interesting, and many pertinent questions to those that inahbit these halls of ILP.
First of all, great article Rainey.
“Even the most obvious triteness is acceptable, provided it comes with a postmodern wink.” He so stole my sentiments.
B.R. Myers wrote: “That’s right: “strangled, work-driven ways.” Work-driven is fine, of course, except for its note of self-approval, but strangled ways makes no sense on any level.” I beg to differ. I understand strangled for I myself feel that the artist sometimes has to strangle my other selves to produce work. And I don’t think I’m stretching the metaphor too far here . . . strangled, work-driven ways. No sense, nonsense. Nothing baffling.
[…] she seems unaware that all innovative language derives its impact from the contrast to straightforward English" Good point.
“By putting everything in sharp focus she lessens the impact of her vivid sense of locale.” Insightful.
“The critics, however, are too much impressed by the muscles of his prose to care about the heart underneath.” Nice point.
Anyone else sharply dissagree with the critic’s assesment? I find the prose to be flat enough to not attract undue attention to itself–to the writing, writer–as B.R. Myers criticized the earliar writers for, and to take me away from the words to the images and ideas being conveyed.
It’s funny but the critic actually made me want to read White Noise and DeLillo after his barrage of literary assualts on him.
I just wanted to note that this whole buisness about “entering” a woman was theorized very interestingly in a 2000-1 essay on cyber cultures where the thinker argued for the nuanced, though facinating and penetrative, differences between entering a woman and accessing a woman. Anyone can enter a woman, she wrote, but few can access a woman. She of course developed it much better than I can recall, but it’s like having a code that unlocks a cyber account that allows one to access something, compared to anyone being able to enter a supermarket. A rapist can enter a woman, a lover can access her.
Perhaps as an Auster fan I’m predjudiced, but I find his assesment way off. Auster is deep and funny, and rarely do I find parts in his novels where I feel that my time is being “wasted.”
“Like DeLillo, Auster knows the prime rule of pseudo-intellectual writing: the harder it is to be pinned down on any idea, the easier it is to conceal that one has no ideas at all.”
Auster has no ideas at all? Reading his novels I’ve had to stop after certain chapters and walk around from the dizzying spell they produced to allow time to digest some of his magestic scenes. Namely, from the second to last chapter in The City of Illusions. And I haven’t been as depressed and intrugied by a novel, not to mention enjoying almost every page for the simplicity of the prose, of In the Country of Last Things.
On this though the critic is spot on . . . that is incredibly bad and funny for its attempt at seriousness.
“[Serious contemporary American writers ] urge us to move beyond our old-fashioned preoccupation with content and plot, to focus on form instead—and then they subject us to the least-expressive form, the least-expressive sentences, in the history of the American novel.” Interesting…
“plodding style” of Raymond Carver? You are kidding me, right? No, please . . . please tell me that was a joke. … . Bellow’s verbal restraint makes the unexpected repetition of what a difference all the more touching. And Carver’s style has no restraint!? What the phuck does this “professional reviewer” smoke?
Saul Bellow’s The Victim is quoted for an excellent scene of why a character falls in love, and, of course, Auster’s scenes of falling in love are, not uncoincidentlly, left out of this pompous manifesto. In no less respect are Asuter’s scenes any less romantic or moving, in every sense of the word.