Literature is still powerful stuff

Thu Apr 25 05:26:21 CDT 2013

Not a formalist myself, gawd I'm not even sure I'm real, so...but one thing
I like about Wood is that he does have a definite set of ideas, values,
even objective criteria for evaluating fiction. He's not a robot, so he has
his prejudices, his biases, we all do, so, agree or disagree with him, and
I find much to agree with and much to disagree with, he's a very good
critic, an excellent reader. He has two blind spots as I see it: he reads
American Literature through a British lens. Ironic that he favors James, an
America, as his British model. It's a class thing too, as others have
noted. His education is his obvious strength, it seems to stick up his ass
from time time to time. Bloom is an ass too. Maybe it goes with spending
too much time with characters and not enough time with flesh and blood. Who
knows? But the diffenece in these two, and there are major differences of
course, Bloom with his Gnostic ideosyncracies, Wood with his Wooden head,
can be boiled down to Falstaff and James. Bloom is a critic and has screwed
himself into the chair of the industry, Wood is still turning the screw, so
Bllom says Shakespeare gave us our humanity, not jesus or moses or god, bit
Bill from Avon, absurd, but he also gives us his reading of Falstaff and
this makes all the difference. Where is Wood's "Fallstaff"? Of course,
Bloom finds Zoyd a mess, a waste of P talent, and would, if he were forced
to read it, write a scathing critique of Vice, but he loves Slothrop. Wood
can't love Slothrop. Slothrop in an English Uniform standing erect, or, as
Nick Carroway might say, standing at attention, is an American GI, and an
American Guy is one Wood doesn't like. He doesn't like the flotsom that
floats in Gatsby's wake; he doesn't like Gatsby. So, why his fixation? Why
the Americans?

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 4:53 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es> wrote:

> Rich,
>
> You say that literature is nothing, surely you can't mean this, otherwise
> why would you be here commenting on literature. Literarture may be a
> cultural product and all the pomp and play that surround it no more than
> one of the games we play, but make no mistake, literature is powerful
> stuff. Ask Rushdie, go ask Orwell's ghost. You don't think Tom Clancy
> novels are as important as western movies for understanding a certain
> segment of U.S ideology? Do you think Ernst Jünger's 1924 edition of Storms
> of Steel didn't contribute to the rise of german fascism as much as
> economics and other factors?
>
> As for Wood's attempt to distinguish between the good and the bad, and
> convince us of that distinction, he is only doing what he must to establish
> his position and garner the capital and prestige that will make him a
> dominant agent within the dominated section of the social field. OF course
> he doesn't recognise it as such, but who does?
>
> Envy him? Well, the job doesn't sound bad, but no I don't envy him. Have
> you read his essay on Harold Bloom? Jimmy didn't learn from Harold. Like
> that elder critic, whom Wood aims to dethrone, Wood wrote a book that
> apparently made him look like he didn't know so much about what makes good
> literature; I bet he wishes he could make that book disappear sometimes,
> just like Bloom. The danger of critics trying to write fiction.
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com>
> To: Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com>
> Cc: Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net>; Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>;
> "pynchon-l at waste.org" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Wednesday, April 24, 2013 4:46 PM
> Subject: Re: Modern world and paranoia
>
>
> why wood and company need to make such distinctions is beyond me. I
> guess thats where is bread is buttered, to have "opinions" and how
> awful that must be over time. I dont envy him one bit. Literature isnt
> anything.
>
> On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 10:31 AM, Markekohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > The paranoid vision is the modern Gothic? That secondary tradition in
> Woods' education in
> > The Great English Novel tradition......
> >
> > Which, as Bekah points to, might be more " realistic" since the
> Unspeakable Gothic Horrors of the 20th Century.
> >
> > How important in Woods' judgment is his other word: " political" in "
> political paranoia". quite, I'd say....hampers the breadth of greatness of
> vision.
> >
> > Anyway, if GR is a politically paranoid fiction, which Wood might have
> nagging on him ( as he has now admitted) with his "once and for all"
> remark, then he is wrong ( partly even on his own terms because Pynchon
> does layer a non-political depth of Life and Life Only in it).
> >
> > It is also what he almost recognized in Against the Day but stepped back
> from. see my unpublished letter to him about it.
> >
> > Sent from my iPad
> >
> > On Apr 24, 2013, at 10:08 AM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >
> >> Sounds to me like Wood gets confused between what he likes and what is
> good.   Just because a reader doesn't personally like a book doesn't mean
> it's not fine lit.   Paranoia could be a part of 21st century realism the
> way religion was often a part of Victorian lit.  I tend to appreciate Wood,
> too - but I think he's stuck in the early 20th century about some things.
> >>
> >> Bekah
> >>
> >>
> >> On Apr 24, 2013, at 2:29 AM, Matthew Cissell <macissell at yahoo.es>
> wrote:
> >>
> >>>    Nowadays it doesn't take anytime at all to form a conspiracy
> theory. Go ask Gene Rosen who helped some kids on his driveway the day of
> the Newtown masacre, poor man.
> >>>    And now we have Boston. Several witnesses have identified the
> supect as the perp, video footage, and now an admission of guilt - and
> people claim it is a conspiracy; check out the movement to protect poor
> little Dzokhar from THEM.
> >>>    So given all this we must address James Wood's claim (in his essay
> on DeLillo from the Broken Estate): "Indeed, Underworld proves, once and
> for all, or so I must hope, the incompatability of the political paranoid
> vision with great fiction." Further along he says that paranoia is bad for
> the novel. Hmm.
> >>>
> >>>    I readily admit my admiration for Wood's erudition and critical
> prose, however, my admiration ends there. In trying to advance his mission
> (reshaping the view of literature through his choice of lens) he goes too
> far out on a limb that will not support the weight of his ego or inflated
> ideas.
> >>>
> >>>    Now I suppose Alice might bring me up on all that but I can handle
> it. Waddayathink AL? Is Jimmy Wood right about paranoia and the novel?
> >>>
> >>> ciao
> >>> mc otis
> >>
>
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