tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post3997998565622348123..comments2024-01-06T10:36:04.084-05:00Comments on A Commonplace Blog: “Fiction was king”D. G. Myershttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-28928850337426688992012-12-16T15:03:18.222-05:002012-12-16T15:03:18.222-05:00Well, is it then a good thing or bad? I personally...Well, is it then a good thing or bad? I personally happen to think that literature, high literature, is pretty much the best thing we have to show for ourselves: there is a clear sense of being diminished now that we obviously entering a post-literary age. I suppose no-one will be there to write the equivalent epitaph for fiction for being "a serious house on serious earth". We are getting post-serious.<br /><br />I know this sounds reactionary, but I suppose being a liberal is pretty reactionary these days...stockholm slenderhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16909107517362691387noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-62243170233524966482012-12-09T08:04:32.628-05:002012-12-09T08:04:32.628-05:00You’re too hard on Keneally, George. While enterin...You’re too hard on Keneally, George. While entering his novels do not make you lower your voice, as if you were in church, they are very good. For an offbeat performance, try <i>Passenger</i>, a novel narrated by a foetus.<br /><br />As for shocking Shakespeare. Your allusion is too snide by half. As I’ve said elsewhere, to bend and play with the genres you’ve got to have the genres. The Renaissance conception of the poet (see Jonson, see Donne) included mastery of all the poetic genres—sonnet, epigram, elegy, verse letter, <i>etc</i>. And were there really no distinctions between high and low? Or did I miss the scene in which Shakespeare put bear-baiting up on stage?D. G. Myershttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10659136455045567825noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3458341.post-2963077021253097082012-12-08T22:31:35.713-05:002012-12-08T22:31:35.713-05:00First, is Kenneally really the man to be complaini...First, is Kenneally really the man to be complaining? I have read only one of his books a novel about the American Civil War. It struck me as Michenerian, good enough of its kind, but not of a kind I was going to seek out.<br /><br />"The arbiters of literary culture have either departed (few remember Irving Howe, say, or Randall Jarrell) or have devolved into popular celebrities, half sage, half buffoon."<br /><br />Jarrell himself, in "The Age of Criticism", said that their were households in which the critic had replaced the analyst, who had replaced the pastor. He did not seem to regard this as healthy, however well he was pleased and maybe even paid to tell the readers of The Nation what to make of this or that book.<br /><br />I have never have never been sworn in as a reader. Ms. Ozick's assertions, whay you quote of them, do tempt me to swearing, but profanely:<br /><br />"Readers nowadays will hardly tolerate long blocks of print unbroken by dialogue or action, and if there are to be long blocks of print at all, they must be in familiar, speedy, colloquial, undemanding prose."<br /><br />I would need to know which nowadays readers she contrasts with which back-then readers. No doubt things were different in Lionel Trilling's seminars, but 35 years ago I knew plenty of English majors who found Henry James intolerable.<br /><br />"There are porous boundaries between high and low, popular and serious, literature and its negation; but there are no longer any distinct kinds."<br /><br />That would have deeply shocked Shakespeare, eh?Georgehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14819154529261482038noreply@blogger.com