Was Paul M's Eagleton tidbit on THE UNCONSCIOUS

[alice wellintown]

Yup, it ain't for the common reader, whoever she or he is. But that
argument is easy. We can argue that about any book of this kind. Like
the books, how to read novels or literature like a professor and so
on, this book is not for students of fiction who are learning how
fiction works or how to read fiction; those who are better read than
Wood will get the most out of it, and will discover its true errors,
accept, if not agree with, its most insightful readings. His critique
of Pynchon is fairly solid, but, of course, it is also skewed by his
taste, his ambition, for Wood fancies himself, somehow, a Henry James
the critic. I any event, the chapter on consciousness is great and
probably better and easier to read than Eagleton. The development that
Wood traces is not new, but it provides a very good foundation for his
examination of characters and how they work. It also supports his
critique of author's like P and how they use and make characters. I
don't agree that P is a child of Fielding. On this, Wood is simpley
misreading the American Tradition that P sprung from and continues to
advance. Tanner, as stated several times here, is an excellent
dialectic to Wood on the American Tradition. Because so many,
including Wood, conflate James and Conrad, then link him with
Fitzgeral and Hemingway and all the flotsam that has been shored
against the ruins of Eliot and James, they misread American
Literature, ignoring its so-called renaissance period as an attempt to
write romance in the European style (Melville & Co.).



On Fri, Oct 19, 2012 at 5:40 AM, jochen stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:
> Found that http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/august08-how-fiction-works/
> in the Web, and found it utterly convincing.
>
> Perhaps there's more to find in the book - I doubt it.
>
> 2012/10/19 alice wellintown <alicewellintown at gmail.com>:
>> In _How Fiction Works_ , in the chapter, "A Brief History of
>> Consciosness", Wood examines, first, the OT Story of David, then
>> Macbeth, and then Raskalnikov. It is worth reading. It is worth
>> reading.
>>
>>
>>
>>> The Eagleton book is The Event of Literature.  The chapter I was discussing
>>> is entitled Stategy, which according to Eagleton comes from Burke, who saw
>>> human communication as a form of action.  Dramatism.
>>>
>>> On Mark's comments, for me the sure sign of real literature is originality.
>>> The presentation of non conventional values is ipso facto originality.
>>> Values can be expressed in a million ways.  Where does this expression come
>>> from--from the writer's unconscious.  More generally from all that is hidden
>>> from normal view. Nothing is new under the sun.  But much is hidden.
>>>