A Momentary Taste of Being

I may already have referenced this essay by Judith Butler, but if not, here it is.

Who owns Kafka? A lecture by Judith Butler--yes, THAT Judith Butler, founder, progenitor, and proud proprietor of the lesbian phallus, on Franz Kafka's works and how they found their way into print.

via Books Inq: Influence: An Exercise in Three Wanders

Averted

The Strange Personality of Christ Interesting and intriguing observations.  Read it!  Read them!

Particularly notable is the then-royal-family's view of Eliot's masterwork.

Neat excerpts that suggest the scholarly life.

Or is it good poets, bad critics?

Start the Not Literature Debate with Anthony And continue to his source I haven't fully assimilated the arguments (and I will), but I have said before that arbitrary denigration of a genre or even of a particular work is less about supporting literature than it is about bolstering one's own ego and weltanschauung .

Is Literary Culture Shutting Down?

UD gives us an analysis of one of D. H. Lawrence's poems Very much worth your time to look into--personally, as a poetic view, I prefer Keats's view of autumn, about which more later.  However, I love what the blogger at UD provides for us by way of assisting our appreciation of the poem.  Thank you!

Amy Hungerford lectures on Blood Meridian

Comments both on the phrase and on Franzen's Freedom .

Weiner, Picoult, and Franzen redux. I have to say that from the soundbites posted here, Weiner and Picoult both have some interesting points.  I consider the critics views of such luminaries as Charles Dickens (whom they despised and derided) and Arnold Bennett (whom they loved and adored) and wonder whether one should invest so much time worrying about what critics have to say.  Most of them are ordinary people with extraordinary opinions and the wherewithal to express those opinions succinctly and clearly.  Does that make what they laud worthy of the praise?  Not necessarily--critics can be as confused or as idiosyncratic (or more so) than any common reader.  That the critics rally around Franzen is not necessarily indicative of Franzen's true worth in the literary world.  Nor is it indicative of a lack of worth.  It is merely the opinion of the here and now reacting to something that speaks to the zeitgeist or spirit of the time.  Whether go...

May they rest in peace--Frank Kermode and Bernard Knox--gentlemen and scholars. And an obituary for Frank Kermode  And Bernard Knox

Not necessarily the main thrust of the blog entry--this portion of an exchange between James Wood and Dana Gioia on poetry is quite fine. Fine enough indeed to prompt me to encourage you to look at the entire thing-- Gioia v. Wood From Gioia's opening foray: Reacting against this soggy status quo, the Modernists refashioned American poetry in a variety of ways. Robinson, Frost, and Jeffers created what might be called a tough-minded Naturalist style. Moore, Eliot, and Pound worked out a hard-edged objective approach. Stevens explored a different sort of impersonality steeped in metaphysical speculation. Cummings, Williams, Ransom, Crane, and Hughes each made his own contribution. Ultimately, the Modernists not only changed our poetry, but together they constituted perhaps the greatest cluster of talent in the history of American literature. Although they represented a range of aesthetics, they shared a conviction that poetry benefited from compression, intensity, an...

A quotation from Josipovici that intrigues me enough to make me want to look into the book ( Whatever Happened to Modernism ?) . And a shorter poem to complement our longer read of The Prelude .

A short paper on the genesis of The Prelude

Views of Reality Hunger by David Shields. The consensus--who cares? and go away--said far more politely, of course.  I'm of the ho-hum school.  The book is subtitled  "A Manifesto" so it's obviously a book driven by one person's agenda.  From the description of it, not an agenda I have the least interest in.  I haven't cared for most of the highly footnoted fiction I've glanced at, nor with most of the fragments, anti-novels, or experiments in form.  They're all fine for what they are, but I'm obviously not the intended audience and I'm okay with that.  If an author wants to write for the 30 people in the world willing to tolerate her/his written version of LaTourette's, more power to him/her.

At Times Flow Stemmed a cogent excerpt of a review of James Wood on Chang-Rae Lee's The Surrendered.