Some Ramblings on the Art of Criticism
When one notes "perfection of language" as one of the qualities of a work, waht is one saying? Is there any sense in saying that "her sentences work perfectly?" Isn't that just much nonsense? Of course they work perfectly, if they convey her meaning. When I read about how marvelous Gertrude Stein is, I can only scratch my head and wonder about what might make her so--complete opacity? total indecipherability? babbling nonsense? She writes on the page what anyone else speaks and the speaker is remanded to custody for his own protection. I read the doped up, drunken blitherings of a Jack Kerouac and cannot deny the energy of them even as I find myself in rare agreement with Truman Capote.
Is the language of Henry James perfect? Gustave Flaubert? James Joyce? Virginia Woolf? William Faulkner? If so, in what does the quality of perfection subsist? How can all of these writers be perfect?
Sometimes, I'm of the opinion that one starts with one's reaction and feeling and looks backward to justify it in some manner. I don't like Gertrude Stein, so I'll intimate that she has no knowledge of English or of composition (but how can that be as her sentences strive one by one to dismantle ordinary understanding of the language.) I love James Joyce, so I'll show how his language reaches perfection. But does it? Can one really say that Finnegans Wake reaches perfection? If so, what is one saying when one writes such a sentence?
In short, critical judgment is not a science; things are said that have and can have no substantive backing. One can quote an entire book in defense of a central thesis; however, one may be no closer to proving the idea, because another laughingly comes along and dismantles it. Finnegans Wake is perfection: ah, then, why is it incomprehensible to most who try to read it? The Waves is a masterpiece: of what then? character? plot? language? Why is it in any way superior to To the Lighthouse?
Each critic you read can make their point forcefully. Harold Bloom despises the poetry and prose of Edgar Allan Poe: Charles Baudelaire thought it the apotheosis of literature. And so forth. Critical judgment is interesting not in what it says about a work, but in what it says about approaches to a work. In a critical piece one learns more about the mind of the critic than the soul of a poet. And perhaps the value of that learning is that one sees how to read with more passion, more engagement, more attention to the little details that can make such a delight of reading.
Is the language of Henry James perfect? Gustave Flaubert? James Joyce? Virginia Woolf? William Faulkner? If so, in what does the quality of perfection subsist? How can all of these writers be perfect?
Sometimes, I'm of the opinion that one starts with one's reaction and feeling and looks backward to justify it in some manner. I don't like Gertrude Stein, so I'll intimate that she has no knowledge of English or of composition (but how can that be as her sentences strive one by one to dismantle ordinary understanding of the language.) I love James Joyce, so I'll show how his language reaches perfection. But does it? Can one really say that Finnegans Wake reaches perfection? If so, what is one saying when one writes such a sentence?
In short, critical judgment is not a science; things are said that have and can have no substantive backing. One can quote an entire book in defense of a central thesis; however, one may be no closer to proving the idea, because another laughingly comes along and dismantles it. Finnegans Wake is perfection: ah, then, why is it incomprehensible to most who try to read it? The Waves is a masterpiece: of what then? character? plot? language? Why is it in any way superior to To the Lighthouse?
Each critic you read can make their point forcefully. Harold Bloom despises the poetry and prose of Edgar Allan Poe: Charles Baudelaire thought it the apotheosis of literature. And so forth. Critical judgment is interesting not in what it says about a work, but in what it says about approaches to a work. In a critical piece one learns more about the mind of the critic than the soul of a poet. And perhaps the value of that learning is that one sees how to read with more passion, more engagement, more attention to the little details that can make such a delight of reading.
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