V-2nd C4 The Search for Bridey Murphy

[alice wellintown]

One P-lister sez that Lit-crits and Art-crits don't get artists and
generally write a bunch of BS. Well, I'm not gonna go there, but I
would say that critics are pretty important and that w/o thses critics
we would not know much great art. Melville is a fine example. This
can, of course, cut the other way; critics ignore or dismiss works of
genius or elevate works of non-genius, then swing round and cut back
against the grain, rediscovering, revising, revisiting, re-writing and
even reinventing or reconstructing the deconstructed. Some critics
develop theories about the creative process. Harold Bloom, for example
applies Freudian theory in his _Anxiety and Influence_. Sticking with
Bloom, critics also have hobby-horses, Bloom's keen interest in the
gnostic in literature, for example, informs his reading and his
writing so that when he writes about P's GR, he discusses the gnostic
in the text or in the mind (conscious and uncncious) of the author.
Had Bloom applied his oedipal theory of anxiety and influence to P,
Adams might serve as P's father in his early years and, later when P
is older and the anxiety is lessened and the influence is acknowledged
(in SL Intro P recognizes the father of his slow learner years), Bloom
might have taken up Melville or Rilke. In any event, Lit-critics are
what they are, some love them and some hate them.  But writers have
another sort of critic. I;ve mentioned Edmund Wilson a few times. P
notes that Wilson's _To the Finland Station_ is a book he got round to
after his slow learnings and that the text had an impact. Wilson was a
major dude in Lit-Crit and he is a lot of fun to read. I mentioned and
alluded to several of his essays recently and to that wonderful
Introduction by L. Menand. While it is known that Wilson took kafka to
the woodshed, he slapped his good friend Fitzgerald with left handed
compliments before kissing his Irish arse. He also punches Huxley in
the balls. His essays on historical criticism and marxist criticism
and bunch of other topics are lots of fun if Lit-crit turns on your
love light. Anyway, Wilson knew that F. Scott got talent, rare Irish
beauty with words, and he helped the guy out. This is not easy to do
cause young writers, and those trying to write their first novel, a
great american novel that will be compared with the books by the gods
of the great american novel, are full to the brim with influence and
anxiety is trying to keep a lid on it all and maybe pump in a little
more to spruce up or cover up some roads more traveled by readers and
certainly by critics, then by the young quick study. An honest
evaluation of the influence and anxiety seems to expose some patches
(Wilson berates Pound for his copy-catting, even of Eliot, and his
patches) and palimpsests that, either get us wondering how excellent
V. might be with a reload or re-dux or ducks tape and spackle and
paint job or how wonderful young P was to have in a creative writing
class. Stop writing like that! Find your own voice, listen to the
world, close your books and write from ....well, that is another
topic...I don't believe that we can teach critical thinking or
creativity or creative writing. So, that Newsweek essay on the decine
of creativity in America...well teach Jazz to Chinese player pianos.
That is not PC, but as a black female trans-gender victim of dr. shoe
and his maker, I got no guilt about that.