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No charter for social action
When you come right down to it, literary interpretation (whatever else it is) is an effort to preserve a text from being used as a charter for social action.
Monday, November 10, 2008
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Commonplace book
orig. A book in which ‘commonplaces’ or passages important for reference were collected, usually under general heads; hence, a book in which one records passages or matters to be especially remembered or referred to, with or without arrangement.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
1578 COOPER Thesaurus A studious yong man ... may gather to himselfe good furniture both of words and approved phrases ... and to make to his use as it were a common place booke. 1642 FULLER Holy & Prof. St. A Common-place-book contains many notions in garrison, whence the owner may draw out an army into the field.
OED
Reviews
- Auslander, “Hope: A Tragedy”
- Auster, “Invisible”
- Bailey, “The Astrologer”
- Bauer, “Frances and Bernard”
- Beha, “What Happened to Sophie Wilder”
- Bellow, “Letters”
- Bernays, “The Man on the Third Floor”
- Berry, “What Are People For?”
- “The Best American Poetry”
- Brombert, “Musings on Mortality”
- Broyard, “Intoxicated by My Illness”
- Buckley, “They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?”
- Cameron, “Coral Glynn”
- Cantalupo, “Emma Wolf’s Short Stories”
- Chabon, “Telegraph Avenue”
- Clayton, “Mitzvah Man”
- Cohen, “Amateur Barbarians”
- Connelly, “The Brass Verdict”
- Eco, “The Prague Cemetery”
- Erdrich, “The Round House”
- Ford, “Independence Day”
- Franzen, “Freedom”
- Gates, “The Signifying Monkey”
- Gorra, “Portrait of a Novel”
- Gurganus, “Local Souls”
- Halkin, “Melisande! What Are Dreams?”
- Hamilton, “Death of a Citizen”
- Harding, “Tinkers”
- Heller, “The Believers”
- Henkin, “The World Without You”
- Hill, “Grand Strategies”
- Hitchcock, “Another Shore”
- Hoeveler, “Watch on the Right’
- Jacobson, “Zoo Time”
- Jeffers, “Norman Podhoretz”
- Jones, ”Adventures of Douglas Bragg”
- Kamenetz, “Burnt Books”
- Kernan, “The Death of Literature”
- Krauss, “Great House”
- Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby”
- Lynn, “The Exiles”
- McCarry, “Shelley’s Heart”
- McCarry, “The Shanghai Factor”
- McMurtry, “Literary Life”
- Marcus, “The Flame Alphabet”
- Martin, “Break the Skin”
- Merullo, “Fidel’s Last Days”
- Messer, “Grand River and Joy”
- Munro, “Dear Life”
- Munson, “November Criminals”
- Oakeshott, “The Voice of Liberal Learning”
- Obreht, “The Tiger’s Wife”
- Ohmann, “Politics of Letters”
- Ozick, “Foreign Bodies”
- Pelikan, “The Idea of the University”
- Pierpont, “Roth Unbound”
- Pipkin, “Woodsburner”
- Powers, “Suitable Accommodations”
- Prose, “Goldengrove”
- Prose, “Touch”
- Robinson, “Absence of Mind”
- Robinson, “When I Was a Child I Read Books”
- Rosenblum, “Herself When She Is Missing”
- Roth, “Indignation”
- Roth, “The Humbling”
- Roth, “Nemesis”
- Russo, “That Old Cape Magic”
- Ruttenberg, “The Passionate Torah”
- Segal, “The Innocents”
- Shamsie, “Burnt Shadows”
- Sloan, “Jerzy Kosinski”
- Spencer, “Men in Black”
- Spiotta, “Stone Arabia”
- Steiner, “Real Presences”
- Stern, “The Frozen Rabbi”
- Teachout, “Beyond the Boom”
- Toutonghi, “Evel Knievel Days”
- Wagenstein, “Isaac’s Torah”
- Winton, “Breath”
- Wolfe, “Back to Blood”
- Yglesias, “A Happy Marriage”
- Youmans, “A Death at the White Camellia Orphanage”
- Zipperstein, “Rosenfeld’s Lives”
Reconsiderations
- Bellow, “Mr Sammler’s Planet”
- Brinig, “Singermann”
- Brudno, “The Fugitive”
- Buechner, “Godric”
- Cahan, “The Rise of David Levinsky”
- Capote, “In Cold Blood”
- Caspary, “Thicker than Water”
- Cather, “My Ántonia”
- Dick, “The Man in the High Castle”
- Fante, “Full of Life”
- Forbes, “A Mirror for Witches”
- Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning”
- Fraser, “Flashman”
- Gellhorn, “Point of No Return”
- Gold, “Jews Without Money”
- Grade, “The Yeshiva”
- Graff, “Literature Against Itself”
- Grant, “When I Lived in Modern Times”
- Jabotinsky, “Samson”
- James, “The Lolita Man”
- James, “The American”
- Johnson, “Middle Passage”
- Lewis, “The Wife of Martin Guerre”
- Lewis, “Against a Darkening Sky”
- Lewisohn, “The Island Within”
- Maugham, “Cakes and Ale”
- Miller, “The Raven and the Whale”
- Morrison, “Beloved”
- Nabokov, “The Real Life of Sebastian Knight”
- Nabokov, “Bend Sinister”
- Nabokov, “Pale Fire”
- O’Connor, “Stealing Home”
- Orwell, “Keep the Aspidistra Flying”
- Ozick, “The Shawl”
- Portis, “Masters of Atlantis”
- Powers, “Morte D’Urban”
- Prose, “A Changed Man”
- Puzo, “The Godfather”
- Roth, “Call It Sleep”
- Roth, “Goodbye, Columbus”
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” I
- Roth, “Portnoy’s Complaint,” II
- Roth, “The Ghost Writer”
- Roth, “The Dying Animal”
- Russo, “Empire Falls”
- Shaara, “The Killer Angels”
- Sheed, “The Hack”
- “The Sopranos”
- Steinbeck, “Travels with Charley”
- Strunk and White, “The Elements of Style”
- Tarr, “The Conversion of Chaplain Cohen”
- Tobenkin, “Witte Arrives”
- Trilling, “The Middle of the Journey”
- Villarreal, “Pocho”
- Wallant, “The Pawnbroker”
- Wharton, “The Age of Innocence”
- Willeford, “The Shark-Infested Custard”
- Williams, “Stoner”
- Williams, “The Hair of Harold Roux”
- Winter, “Hoffman’s Hunger”
- Wolf, “Other Things Being Equal”
- Wright, “Native Son”
- Yezierska, “Bread Givers”
Authors
- Jacques Barzun
- Judith Butler
- Hortense Calisher
- Evan S. Connell Jr.
- J. V. Cunningham
- Peter De Vries
- Denis Dutton
- Joseph Epstein
- William Gay
- Günter Grass
- George Hitchcock
- Christopher Hitchens
- James D. Houston
- Howard Jacobson
- Stephen King
- Irving Kristol
- Charles McCarry
- Roland Merullo
- Wright Morris
- Howard Nemerov
- Richard John Neuhaus
- Anthony Powell
- Francine Prose
- Philip Roth
- J. D. Salinger
- Susan Fromberg Schaeffer
- Wilfrid Sheed
- Lionel Trilling
- John Updike
- Mario Vargas Llosa
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
Topics
- Academic interpretation
- Acknowledgments in novels
- Adultery
- Advanced Placement English
- Anthologies
- Baseball and fiction
- Blogging, I: why do it
- Blogging, II: to essay
- Blogging, III: the economics
- Blogging, IV: and freedom
- Cancer, I: etiquette
- Cancer, II: diagnosis
- Censorship
- Conservatives and the university
- Criticism, I: diminishing returns
- Criticism, II: and careerism
- Criticism, III: and credentials
- Criticism, IV: the question
- Criticism, V: ten rules
- Criticism, VI: and moral fashion
- Dialogue, I: chitchat
- Dialogue, II: twittle-twattle
- Difficulty
- Elitism
- The existence of fictional characters
- Experimental writing, I
- Experimental writing, II
- Fiction and truth
- The fox’s apology
- Future of the book, I
- Future of the book, II
- Future of the book, III
- Future of the book, IV
- Future of the book, V
- The game of fiction
- Gay marriage
- Genre
- The gentleman
- Highbrow and lowbrow
- Holocaust, I: and Israel
- Holocaust, II: silence
- Holocaust, III: memory
- Ideology
- Identity, I: and freedom
- Identity, II: and argument
- Identity, III: making it large
- Influence
- Intellectuals and politics
- Irony
- The Left, II: and literature
- The Left, I: and academe
- The Left, III: and culture
- The liberal arts
- Literary evaluation
- The literary fallacy
- Literary fiction
- Literary history
- Literary mashups
- Literature, I: the very idea
- Literature, II: with prefixes
- Literature, III: and status
- Literature, IV: working definition
- Literature, V: the institution
- Literature, VI: and politics
- “Lolita,” I: style
- “Lolita,” II: background
- “Lolita,” III: an interpretation
- The novel of belief
- Plot and thought
- Pulp literature
- Reviewing, I: its ethics
- Reviewing, II: “mean”
- Reviewing, III: “positive”
- Reviewing, IV: and verdicts
- Satire
- The scandal of literary prizes
- The scandal of Philip Roth’s prize
- Self-evidence
- Sex and the novel
- The shlimil
- Seriousness
- Solipsism in interpretation
- The spirit of party in criticism
- Suspense
- Technology and writing
- Terrorism by other means
- The text, I: mucked up
- The text, II: unified
- The text, III: crafted
- The text, IV: experienced
- The text, V: ignored
- Timeliness
- Unreliable narrators
Five Books
Book Lists
- Cancer reading
- Complete annotated guide to 9/11 novels
- Conservative novels
- Depressing novels
- Fifty best novels since 1880
- “50 Most Essential Works Of Jewish Fiction Of The Last 100 Years”
- Football novels
- Forthcoming fiction, 2010
- Historical novels
- Hollywood novels
- The Holocaust: A reader’s guide
- Labor novels
- MLA rankings of American writers
- One-book authors
- Texas novels
- Veterans’ books
- Year in Jewish books (2010)
- Year in Jewish books (2011)
Symposium
D. G. Myers
A critic and literary historian for nearly a quarter of a century at Texas A&M and Ohio State universities, I am the author of The Elephants Teach and ex-fiction critic for Commentary. I have also written for Jewish Ideas Daily, the New York Times Book Review, the Weekly Standard, Philosophy and Literature, the Sewanee Review, First Things, the Daily Beast, the Barnes & Noble Review, the Journal of the History of Ideas, American Literary History, and other journals. Here is the Commonplace Blog’s statement of principles, such as they are.
Pages
- Home
- American Fiction of the Sixties
- American Jewish Fiction, 1892–1972
- The New Historicism in Literary Study
- Learning to Be Human: Oakeshott on Education
- Why College Sports
- Criticism According to Kenner
- Robert Penn Warren and the History of Criticism
- Politicizing Scholarship: The Iannone Affair
- Invitation to an Argument
- On the Teaching of Literary Theory
- The Mind of the Poet-Critic
- Between Stories: A Memoir of Raymond Carver
- Stanley Elkin’s Jewish Question
- Bad Writing
- Michael Chabon’s Imaginary Jews
- Jean Améry: A Biographical Introduction
- Francine Prose and the Great Tradition
Blog archive
-
▼
2008
(57)
-
▼
November
(20)
- Intellectual dishonesty at the Literary Saloon
- Literature without prefixes
- Literature: the very idea
- Matthiessen wins National Book Award
- The scandal of literary prizes
- The muddle of literary evaluation
- A Mirror for Witches
- Obama and academic change
- Being left—and being left alone
- Forty years ago today
- Watch for falling reputations!
- No charter for social action
- The self-evidence principle
- On not writing about politics
- Isaac’s Torah
- Crichton dies at 66
- A new style of political discourse
- The incredible unvanishing book
- Bush’s cultural legacy
- Introducing Le Clézio
-
▼
November
(20)
Blogroll
- About Last Night
- Seth Abramson’s Suburban Ecstasies
- Robert Archambeau’s Samizdat Blog
- Arma Virumque (New Criterion)
- Arts and Letters Daily
- Levi Asher’s Literary Kicks
- Mark Athitakis’s American Fiction Notes
- Scott G.F. Bailey’s Six Words for a Hat
- Nigel Beale’s Nota Bene Books
- Graham Beattie
- Between the Lines
- The Book Beast (Daily Beast)
- Blog Critics/Books
- The Book Book
- Books Blog (Guardian)
- Bookforum
- James Bowman
- Broke and Bookish
- Miriam Burstein’s Little Professor
- Edward Byrne’s One Poet’s Notes
- California Literary Review
- Nicholas Carr’s Rough Type
- Bruce Charlton’s Miscellany
- Matthew Cheney’s Mumpsimus
- Anna Clark’s Isak
- Jessa Crispin’s Blog of a Bookslut
- Critical Mass (National Book Critics’ Circle)
- Jenny Davidson’s Light Reading
- Morris Dickstein
- Andy Domonkos’s Lit Submit
- Elberry’s Ghost
- Sarah Emsley
- Scott Esposito’s Conversational Reading
- J. K. Evanczuk’s Lit Drift
- Fantastical Andrew Fox
- John Fraser
- Michael Gilleland’s Laudator Temporis Acti
- Ted Gioia’s New Canon
- Good Letters (Image Journal blog)
- Daniel Green’s Reading Experience
- Janice Harayda’s One-Minute Book Reviews
- Thomas Hart’s Jurassic Rants
- Ron Hogan’s Beatrice
- Seth C. Holler’s Chickens Have No Myths
- Hungry Like the Woolf
- In Other Words (Toronto Globe and Mail)
- Jacket Copy (Los Angeles Times)
- Alan Jacobs
- Richard Katzev’s Marks in the Margin
- Kenyon Review/Blog
- Patrick Kurp’s Anecdotal Evidence
- Language Log
- Richard LeComte’s Life at the Keyboard
- Martin Levin’s Shelf Life
- Literary Commentary (archive)
- The Long Eighteenth
- Los Angeles Review of Books
- Jennifer Lynn’s Nightlight Readings
- Scott McKenzie’s SlushPile.net
- Rohan Maitzen’s Novel Readings
- James Marcus’s House of Mirth
- Angela Meyer’s Literary Minded
- Perry Middlemiss’s Matilda
- John J. Miller
- Laura Miller
- The Millions
- Colleen Mondor’s Chasing Ray
- The Mookse and the Gripes
- The Neglected Books Page
- Kevin Neilson’s Interpolations
- Maud Newton
- Nigeness
- Brian Oard’s Mindful Pleasures
- Sheila O’Malley
- Open Letters Monthly
- Page-Turner (New Yorker)
- Page Views (N.Y. Daily News)
- Richard L. Pangburn’s Little Known Gems
- Paper Cuts (New York Times)
- Paper Tiger (London Telegraph)
- Hershel Parker’s Fragments from a Writing Desk
- Bill Peschel
- Katherine A. Powers’s Reading Life
- Casey Pycior’s Story Is the Cure
- Steven Riddle’s Momentary Taste of Being
- Georgy Riecke
- Helen Rittelmeyer
- Stephen Romei’s Pair of Ragged Claws
- Roberta Rood’s Books to the Ceiling
- M. J. Rose’s Buzz, Balls & Hype
- Mark Sarvas’s Elegant Variation
- Sam Sattler’s Book Chase
- Andrew Seal’s Blographia Literaria
- Jake Seliger’s The Story’s Story
- Ron Silliman
- Ron Slate’s On the Seawall
- Levi Stahl’s Ivebeenreadinglately
- A Striped Armchair
- Megan Sullivan’s Bookdwarf
- Jeff Sypeck’s Quid Plura?
- Tales from the Reading Room
- Three Percent (University of Rochester)
- Mark Thwaite’s Ready Steady Blog
- The TLS Blog
- Bill Vallicella’s Maverick Philosopher
- Rob Velella’s American Literary Blog
- Virginia Quarterly Review/Blog
- Brandon Watson’s Siris
- Frank Wilson’s Books, Inq.
- Ian Wolcott’s New Psalmanazar
- Tony Woodlief’s Sand in the Gears
- Wuthering Expectations
- Marly Youmans’s Palace at 2:00 a.m.
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