NP - James Wood on Quadrophenia

[alice wellintown]

There is a certain snobbish envy that is present in many English
critics who write about American art. The Americans, though
anti-intellectual by nature and trusting more in whale boats and
Indians than in Harvards and Yales,  let alone those who still keep
Kings and Queens, are often Uncle Tom'd by British Orientals even
went, as in a substitute, the compass is bent and the East faces West.
Wood is a fine critic. He has earned his degrees.But his reading of
American Literature, while better than most, treats the Americans as
New Englanders still. This is a mistake. In any event, while it is
important to read Pynchon in the tradition of Cervantes, Fielding,
Stearn, as Wood does, and to draw the traditional lines to Melville,
as Wood does, its just as important to read Pynchon as a postmodern
American author. And, postmodern American Literature, while not
divorced from British or European Literature, or from South American
Literature or World Literature for that matter, evolved out of a
unique encounter between the American people and the North American
continent and its peoples. This, it seems to me, is something Wood
seems to ignore, and it cripples his readings of the more innovative
and creative elements, not to mention the independence of American
fiction.

And, as for me, if, by any possibility, there be any as yet
undiscovered prime thing in me; if I shall ever deserve any real
repute in that small but high hushed world which I might not be
unreasonably ambitious of; if hereafter I shall do anything that, upon
the whole, a man might rather have done than to have left undone; if,
at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any
precious MSS. in my desk, then here I prospectively ascribe all the
honor and the glory to whaling; for a whale-ship was my Yale College
and my Harvard.



On Sun, Jan 10, 2010 at 12:02 PM, John Carvill <johncarvill at gmail.com> wrote:
> Credit where due etc., here's something by James Wood that I actually like:
>
> "... The energy of the music has its counterpart in the lyrics.
> Townshend never wrote better words than here. The narrative of the
> "mod kid" - from teenage rebel to down-and-out, from London to
> Brighton, a boy both following the fashion and left behind by it -
> gives the lyrics shape and tautness. One of the sadnesses of being
> "trained" in English literature is that it makes you snobbish or
> uncertain about the literary quality of rock lyrics. When I was a
> teenager, I used to think that Bruce Springsteen's phrase "the lonely
> cool before dawn" (from "Thunder Road") was great poetry. Nowadays, I
> still think it is pretty good rock writing, though a bit kitschy too,
> and to think like this is to have lost some essential trust.
> Townshend's writing can be pretentious, but at its best was more
> sociologically acute even than Springsteen's - less sentimental, and
> brilliant with one-liners: "I was born with a plastic spoon in my
> mouth" ("Substitute); "Hope I die before I get old" ("My Generation");
> "Teenage wasteland" ("Baba O'Riley"); "And the parting on the left /
> Is now the parting on the right . . . Meet the new boss / Same as the
> old boss" ("Won't Get Fooled Again"). ..."
>
> http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/may/30/quadrophenia-seminal-album-who
>