“Poetry fettered fetters the human race. Nations are destroyed, or flourish, in proportion as their poetry, painting, and music are destroyed or flourish!”
- William Blake
Let’s start with this: an excellent article by Stephen King on Harry Potter and reading in modern society. [Warning: do not read it if you haven't read the Potter books, because it spoils them completely. And if you think the books are silly or beneath you, you are a silly person. You can understand this post without reading King's article.]
There’s one quotation from near the end which I particularly liked, and which is the basis of this post.
I began by quoting Shakespeare; I’ll close with the Who: The kids are alright. Just how long they stay that way sort of depends on writers like J.K. Rowling, who know how to tell a good story (important) and do it without talking down (more important) or resorting to a lot of high-flown gibberish (vital). Because if the field is left to a bunch of intellectual Muggles who believe the traditional novel is dead, they’ll kill the damn thing.
And that is the essence of the problem with modern academia and people like the despicable Harold Bloom (who, incidentally, hates both Rowling and King). Not only do they have a terrible idea of what makes a good novel (something as obscurantist and incomprehensibly written as possible, with little to nothing real to say about the world), they also want the novel to be dead. The idea that “no-one reads anymore” and “all the good novels were written in the past” is essential to their understanding of art: that it’s something exclusive that only they and their buddies can understand. If it’s popular (i.e. King or Rowling) then it must be bad. If they had lived in Shakespeare’s times, they (like many others) would have thought him mediocre; they would have said the same about Dickens or Chesterton or Mark Twain or any other great artist popular in his own time.
But people like Harold Bloom aren’t just glorifying a past they intentionally distort: they’re strangling the present. To a large degree thanks to them, the current attitude towards art in our society is deeply unhealthy. It’s not just that some writers get overlooked – that has always happened and probably always will, to some degree. And it’s not just that some academics wouldn’t recognize a great novel if someone hit them repeatedly in the face with it (Harold, I’m thinking of you) – no, even readers think lowly of what they enjoy reading. Millions of people read Stephen King, and there’s good reason for it: not just because his books are often exciting or scary, but because they’re full of wonderful observations of modern society, strong and memorable characters, powerful themes that are relevant and important, and on a sentence-to-sentence level, simply fantastic writing.
But how many of these readers are aware, when they’re putting away It or Duma Key, that they’ve just read a literary masterpiece? Almost none of them. “I know it’s just Stephen King,’” they say, “but I kinda like it.” As if reading something enjoyable has to be justified. As if art must, by definition, be unpleasant to be meaningful. It is one of the best novels ever written about childhood and childhood friendships. Duma Key is a deeply thoughtful work about friendship, fatherhood, the human body, and art. They are also exciting and funny and scary – like a good Shakespeare play.
King makes another very useful observation:
And, of course, the bigheads would never have credited Harry’s influence in the first place, if the evidence hadn’t come in the form of best-seller lists. A literary hero as big as the Beatles? ”Never happen!” the bigheads would have cried. ”The traditional novel is as dead as Jacob Marley! Ask anyone who knows! Ask us, in other words!”
But reading was never dead with the kids. Au contraire, right now it’s probably healthier than the adult version, which has to cope with what seems like at least 400 boring and pretentious ”literary novels” each year.
You see, a great many kids still read. It’s when they turn into adults that they stop. And why is that? It’s because when they’re adults, the books they are expected to read are shit. The critics haven’t applied their disgusting ideas to children’s literature as much (yet) – if only because they don’t take it seriously in the first place. What children read is considered to be mostly stupid anyway, so they have much greater leeway when it comes to reading books they like. But as they grow older, they are taught that the kind of books they enjoyed were stupid, now it’s time to read something boring. Something that no-one but professional critics would really read in the first place; something that people mostly praise because they think they ought to, not because it actually did something for them.
That’s what Harold Bloom and his intellectual bedfellows (like the equally idiotic Theodor Adorno with his hatred of anything modern) are selling us: the death of art. Because what is art if not the ability to reach out and touch people? The ability to talk about the things that make us human, both good and bad? What is art if not imagination and craft combined into something that transcends both?
Art, Mr. Bloom, is not your exclusive boys’ club. It’s a living, breathing entity, a force that is alive now, not just in your silly and outdated idea of a canon. It shouldn’t be populist, but it has every right to be popular. And I hope that one day it crushes you and your accomplices, you stranglers of dreams, because the alternative is too terrible to consider.
Don Naggie
/ July 22, 2009You know Bloom has never irked me to the degree that he has some many others including yourself. I guess I sympathize with his concern for standards and the waning quality of art in the western world. Regarding your article I wanted to make two points, first Bloom does not condemn all current novelists in America or abroad and second I don’t think Bloom finds only the novel to be endanger so much as all art and culture to be endanger due to a lack of standards.
The subjectivity of art makes standards much more difficult to judge than in other fields. It is important to remember that the “canon” attached to the end of Bloom’s book The Western Canon was an compromise he made in order to have the book published and Bloom has expressed on numerous occassions that it is far from a complete or perfect list.
Some of the living novelists Bloom has praised include Philip Roth, Don Delillo, Thomas Pynchon and John Crowley in America and most prominently abroad is the Portugese novelist Jose Saramago whom Bloom finds to be the most powerful living novelist but he also has praised Will Self, Peter Ackroyd, John Banville and A.S Byatt from the UK.
I don’t think Bloom would claim the novel is dead in America, we have great novelists (and poets too.) There has been a shocking loss of cultural knowledge/ memory in the past few generations that only seems to grow as means to determine the quality of a work diminsh. Philip Roth perhaps expressed this looming “dark age” best in his novel “The Dying Animal” which seems very prophetic of our time written it so happens a little over a year prior to 9/11:
We watched the new year coming in around the world, the mass hysteria of no significance that was the millennial New Year’s Eve celebration. Brilliance flaring across the time zones and none ignited by bin Laden. Light whirling over night time London and more spectacular than anything since the splendors of colored smoke billowed up from the blitz. And the Eiffel Tower shooting fire a facsimile flame throwing weapon such as Warner von Bron might have designed for Hitler’s annihilating arsenal. The historical missile of missiles, the rocket of rockets, the bomb of bombs with ancient powers the launching pad the whole of humanity the target. All evening long on networks everywhere the mockery of the Armageddon that we had been awaiting in our backyard shelters since August 6, 1945.
How could it not happen? Even on that very night, especially on that night people anticipating the worst as though the evening were one long air raid drill. The wait for the chain of horrendous Hiroshimas to link in synchronized destruction the abiding civilizations of the world. It’s now or never and it never came.
Maybe that is what everyone was celebrating. That it hadn’t come, never came. That the disaster of the end will now never arrive. All the disorder is controlled disorder punctuated with intervals to sell automobiles. TV doing what it does best the triumph of trivialization over tragedy. The triumph of the surface with Barbara Walters. Rather than the destruction of the age old cities an international eruption of the superficial instead. A global outbreak of sentimentality such as even American’s hadn’t witnessed before. From Sydney to Bethlehem to Times Square the recalculating of clichés occurs at super sonic speeds. No bombs go off no blood is shed, the next bang you hear will be the boom of prosperity and the explosion of markets. Watching this hyped up production of staged pandemonium I have a sense of the moneyed world eagerly entering the prosperous dark ages. A night of human happiness to usher in barbarism.com. To welcome appropriately the shit and the kitsch of the new millennium. A night not to remember but to forget.”
Jonas
/ July 22, 2009But is art really waning that much? I’m not going to say things are great, but there are some pretty amazing works of art out there – but Harold Bloom spends most of his time condemning them.
You’re right about the first point – unlike Adorno, Bloom doesn’t hate everything modern. But his idea of “standards” is quite despicable, because it excludes anything that is popular or doesn’t fit into his very narrow ideas of what it is appropriate to write about. And thus he spends his time railing against writers who are profoundly talented and have important things to say, and ultimately cultivating an incredibly unhealthy attitude towards art.
Yes, but academia has been struggling for ages to get away from the concept of a canon and this kind of thinking.
Some of these writers aren’t half bad, but I think the list says pretty much everything about what Bloom considers quality. And if these writers are all that people are supposed to read… no-one will read.
(And yes, I find J.K. Rowling to be a considerably more accomplished writer than most of those, even on a pure prose level.)
I certainly agree that we’re heading for a cultural and political dark age if things continue like this. But blaming writers like King or Rowling for it is completely upside-down. Here are writers who are both excellent and popular, and have something to say – the very fact that such a large portion of the academic and critical world has decided that only obscure and mostly unpleasant-to-read novels are art is what is leading us into a cultural dark age. People no longer believe art is valuable precisely because art has been defined as boring stuff, and those things that people do enjoy and that are meaningful are not valued as anything but commerce. And so the truly great novels of our time, like Harry Potter, are seem only as products, and even their readers miss many of the wonderful layers of meaning and philosophy.
Jonas
/ July 22, 2009While I respect Roth as a not-too-bad writer, this passage actually makes me wonder about his perception of the world. Since when did the 21st century invent shit and kitsch? There were more than enough inane celebrations of meaningless events before the turn of the millennium. Sentimentality and superficiality? Hello, the 1950s? The 1980s? I agree that it was a depressing spectacle, but to me this seems more like a mixture of technophobia and general nihilism. Quite fashionable with some folks, and probably even honestly meant, but not very interesting or constructive – or perceptive, for that matter.
It’s easy to always see the past as some kind of golden age, and to condemn the present as unsaveable. That’s why writers like Rowling and King interest me a whole lot more: they write about today, recognizing its flaws with much clearer and more painful perception, but not without hope.
Jeff
/ August 1, 2009You’re not very intelligent, are you?
Jonas
/ August 1, 2009No, apparently not, since I am not capable of understanding the profound wisdom of simply posting a sentence like that on someone’s website without explanation. And I like Stephen King, which is also an obvious sign of stupidity, as is any positive reaction to that incompetent populist playwright William Shakespeare and his scatological jokes.
Why don’t you go hang out with Harold and glory in your intellectual powers while the rest of the world attempts to do something meaningful?
P
/ April 21, 2010Jeff, you’re clearly inadequate in more ways than I care to spell out for you, because if I were to do that you would only dismiss it as self-aggrandizing intellectualism and I will have only wasted my energy. That thing that’s missing, though? The nagging feeling that art is ‘waning’? It’s that a man that artlessly hurls the word fuck every five words (King) and a dreadfully barren mind like Rowling’s, which thinks and runs on sheer treacle, on platitudes, on the crassest plot elements, are the best-selling authors of our time. It’s absolutely dismaying to see how like an assembly line it is, the modern human mind: it starts with fairy tales (nothing big like Hans Christian Anderson, just the most meretricious manglings of the originals, rid of all of their power), then goes to Harry Potter, and then goes to the latest Dean Koontz or Stephen King novel–that is, of course, presupposing the mind is ever taught to make sense of words on a page.
The great writers have always been great because of what they do with language, with imagery, how they take the simplest things and assemble from them startling conceits; Shakespeare is remembered not as a populist (where did you get this idea?) but as a wordsmith. Indeed, Shakespeare is the father of modern English more than any one person not named Samuel Johnson, who was its standardizer. He cycled through a vocabulary of over 30 thousand words, whereas Ms. Rowling is dealing with her paltry three or four and the many more on the first few lines in the thesaurus (I find it hilarious how the diction is bumblingly elevated at about the fourth book and steadily so, without fixing the grammatical and syntactical foibles that first made it insufferable, like Rowling’s insistence that there is no difference between the simple past and the subjunctive, which is baffling to me, or the objective or subjective case, which seems an even more glaring elision).
Beyond that, though, let’s talk about the ways in which Charles Dickens or Jonathan Swift or, for foreign mind (I know, it must be difficult for you, what with your meager diet of Gaiman and Rowling), Nikolai Gogol and Leo Tolstoy, engaged with the problems of their age–problems like the workhouses in England, the conflict between England and Ireland, the poor and the wealthy, and so on–and the ways in which they sketched the most vivid characters, like Dickens’s fearsome Ms. Havisham or the decidedly immodest Uriah Heep; let’s talk about Don Quixote and Sancho Panza; let’s talk about Gargantua and Pantagruel. But let’s not stop there! Let’s speak of Faulkner, who was infamously difficult, and the internal monologues that he wove, the narratives that he built out of the thoughts of his characters–and the vividness with which he drew his now mythic Yoknapatawpha County and its inhabitants, from the pernicious Snopes to the hapless Bundrens and Compsons. Where in anything written by either Ms. Rowling or Mr. King is there a passage of such throbbing beauty and lucidity as the two chapters in which the presumably dead Addie recounts her life? Where a love more real than that of Quentin for, well, his sister? But of course you know little of this because you know nothing of the history of the novel, a term which you cheapen terribly by invoking either Ms. Rowling or Mr. King, both of whom are a disgrace to the form and offer nothing at all ‘novel.’
Reading is at its core a solitary act. Popularity has nothing to do with whether something is good, to that extent I will agree with you. But the fact that you so gleefully misrepresent Bloom’s views (and it’s all right–you don’t know any better), the way you belittle at will the significance of the novel by even thinking that Harry Potter is anything like any of the works of the authors I’ve named–with that one can hardly agree, and that’s because it’s plainly absurd. But of course now you will simply seize on the time in which these authors wrote and say that I’m just a nostalgic idiot. To obviate that, even though that’s the tack you inexorably will take, let’s talk about the major writers of our time. Let’s speak of, say, José Saramago, who writes with an inimitable style in long sinuous sentences about terrific “what-if” scenarios, and who won the Nobel Prize. How about Don DeLillo, who I believe wrote the greatest novel of the past 20 years in “Underworld” and some of the greatest going further back in “Mao II” and “White Noise,” featuring the memorable, jaded, comically insular Gladneys, including Jack Gladney, Professor of Hitler Studies who also does not know German. Where is the Dylar in Ms. Rowling’s writing? It’s non-existent, of course; the only symbolism she cares for–the layers of meaning of which you speak, I presume–is the heavy-handed and obvious sort, to which there is no mystery and from which one draws not the slightest degree of edification. Beyond that, how about Cormac McCarthy, whose prose is the most starkly original and shamelessly lyrical American letters has seen perhaps since Faulkner? More to the point, how about Jonathan Franzen, who strikes a perfect tragicomic novel in his withering portrait of suburban America and the failures of the American family across generations to right one another’s mistakes in “The Corrections”? Or what may perhaps be the greatest Vietnam novel ever written, “Tree of Smoke” by Denis Johnson (published just two years ago!). How about “Snow” by Orhan Pamuk, also a Nobel Prize winner, which hearkens back both Kafka and Dostoyevsky, which holds up to the rest of the world the enduring travails of an entire people and which addresses head on the matter of terrorism?
Reading is supposed to produce aesthetic pleasure; it’s supposed to be difficult; you’re supposed to invest yourself in it. You are not a reader in that sense–what you want in your novels is all of the clichés, all of the situational-comedy comebacks and tropes that you see on television. What you want the novel to be is an echo chamber for the utter insipidness of your own life, completely devoid of anything even remotely pioneering, with no stylistic advancements, no desire to test the boundaries of anything, no intertextuality and no context in any tradition other than that of maudlin tripe and the mighty penny dreadful. Given which, it’s natural you should call Harry Potter one of the greatest novels of our time. But be assured they are nowhere near that, and may in fact be among the worst.
P
/ April 21, 2010*strikes a perfect tragicomic balance;
And by the way, it’s funny you should quote William Blake, because Harold Bloom loved William Blake and edited the current volume of his complete works. It is clear to me you haven’t read anything by Bloom (The Western Canon, The Anxiety of Influence, for instance) and are just on here responding, farcically, to the brief invectives he wrote of Harry Potter and Stephen King. Which leads me to ask what makes you think you’re enough of an authority on Bloom’s writing and thought as to make the absurd pronouncements that you make about it?
Nevertheless, Jonas, clearly you are not, as the previous commenter said, all that bright. You might as well just accept it and continue, like the unnamed narrator of Beckett’s masterful “How It Is,” flail and gambol about in the mud of your own profound ignorance.
Jonas
/ April 21, 2010You know, you’ve already exposed the hollowness of your rhetoric. Clearly you’ve never read King, because he quite certainly does not do that. He does, of course, have a wonderful ear for realistic spoken language, but if that’s a crime, well…
Treacle? Really? Can you explain that?
Yes. So? I never said the opposite of that. I am only opposed to those writers who mangle language to produce obscurantist pieces which are then passed off as deep.
Where did I get this idea? Oh, I don’t know, when I studied Shakespeare? I never claimed that he was remembered as a populist – I just remarked that in his own time, people like you would probably have accused him of being one. You do know that his reputation as the greatest playwright and poet of all time developed later, right? In his own time, he was considered good, but others were generally considered better. And his plays were popular plays, enjoyed by and produced for a wide audience.
Oh dear, you don’ think you’re impressing me with your knowledge, are you? I could’ve told you the same when I was 15.
Is it a numbers game, then?
Oh no! A writer writing in their own way and not following your rules!
Not sure what this is supposed to mean, but let’s go on…
Once again, you’re revealing just how hollow your arguments are, by assuming that I read or enjoy Gaiman. You don’t know this. In fact, you know nothing about my reading habits at all, though you could probably have found out something by reading this blog. You’re just randomly applying your prejudices, assuming I fall into some generic geek cliché.
I read and enjoyed Gogol – primarily the short stories – when I was 18 or so. I haven’t read much Tolstoy, but I’ll get around to it. Did you know he hated Shakespeare?
In the works of both King and Rowling, there are many such passages, which you with your arrogance cannot see – and will never see, because you have no love of art, only of the status of art. And name-dropping. Oh, you do love your name-dropping, don’t you, even when it adds nothing to the argument save for illustrating your unspeakable amounts of knowledge? Just like every bad academic.
As a matter of fact, King and Rowling engage the topics of their time more than most “modern” or “postmodern” writers, whose idea of what the important topics are mostly consists of the pathetic psychological problems of white middle-class university professors. But you wouldn’t know that, because you have either not read their work, or read it to hate it, which amounts to the same. You don’t know about King’s evocation of the rise of dictatorship in modern America in “Under the Dome”, or his vivid and heartbreaking characters in “The Dark Tower” (with its many intertextual references, and the way it uses intertextuality not to impress critics but to tell a story), or his exploration of painting, friendship and fatherhood in “Duma Key”. In other words, you’re talking our of your arse.
Of course I don’t! I spent the last seven years studying English and American philology for nothing! I am just another nerd who makes games and must therefore be illiterate and stupid.
The only disgrace to the form is readers like you.
Do I? Please explain. Because I’m pretty much basing myself on his own writings.
Of course I don’t. Thank you for your condescension, all-knowing wise one.
Plainly.
Why have I read and enjoyed so many of them, then?
Because that’s significant?
Well, I happen to believe that a novel can have more depth than simply having symbolism – it can have political, philosophical and aesthetic levels that have nothing to do with symbols. Though I do like Rowling’s symbolism, the few times that she uses it. I don’t see how it is heavy-handed, but it’s your right to think so. (It’s the cliché thing to say, of course, but you seem to love clichés.)
I have very little interest in his work, but perhaps some day I’ll give him another chance. I like how you seem to think that these fashionable writers are somehow challenging and known only to intellectuals, though.
If you want some true lyrical beauty, read Peter S. Beagle.
You seem to believe that this is an important subject matter. I think it’s trivial navel-gazing.
Look, if you want to impress me with your name-dropping, you better drop some names that aren’t in the Fashionable Modern Writers For Beginners bucket. Try Sam Selvon, or Zadie Smith, or Drew Hayden Taylor, or Thomas King. But I guess you wouldn’t know who these people are, because they don’t fall into your conventient little mainstream of pretentiousness.
Yes.
No. Why?
So the only way for you to invest yourself in a text is for it to be difficult? I’m very sorry for you.
Not that all writing needs to be easy, but its formal complexity must be artistically justified. Usually it isn’t, and is nothing more than obfuscation to hide the shallow nature of the content.
My God, you’re hilarious. Now it’s television. Are you going through a checklist of snobbish intellectual clichés?
Do you seriously believe that I read Blake, or Chesterton’s theological work, or E.R. Eddison, or Sam Selvon, to get the same experience I would from a bad sitcom? (I’m assuming you don’t believe such a thing as good situational comedy exists.)
Ah, now you’re really starting to sound like Bloom himself. The penny dreadful – what century is this?
This is doubly funny, given that you clearly have no idea who you’re talking to and what my work is about.
Wow, you must have read very few novels to make an assertion like that.
Jonas
/ April 21, 2010That Bloom loved Blake does not mean that he understood him. In fact, I have read (a long time ago) his academic musings on Blake, and thought they were mostly quite ridiculous, or at least off in significant ways. And I distinctly remember the same opinion being expressed by other academics, including (I believe) G.E. Bentley, who wrote the best biography of Blake I have ever read.
You’re right, I threw The Western Canon across the room before finishing it. But I’ve read plenty of Bloom over the years.
The very idea of a “Western Canon” would’ve appalled Blake, as it does me.
I’ve read a lot more Bloom than Bloom has read King. How about that?
Clearly. Because people who go to other people’s blogs not to argue, but to tell them that they are uneducated fools, are the pinnacle of human intellect.
Ah, there is that delightful condescension again. It’s a shame you weren’t born into the times of the British Empire, you would’ve made a wonderful administrator.
All of this was nothing more than, indeed, self-aggrandizing intellectualism and a waste of your time. Your personal attacks are distasteful and idiotic, given your lack of knowledge about who I am and what I read, and you have not presented a single coherent argument, other than a lot of name-dropping. (Do you think telling me that I am ignorant and will live a miserable, stupid life becomes more true because you name-drop Beckett?)
I should pity you, really, for the way in which you exclude so much great art from your life. I should be sad that there are people so foolish that they need intellectual nitwits like Bloom to tell them what is good and what isn’t. You want to tell me that my life is sad, but my life is filled with the light of art – from Chesterton to King, from Shakespeare and Milton to Rowling, from Lord Dunsany to Tolkien to Beagle. I read the classics, and the moderns, and all those great writers people like you discard because it’s fashionable, or because someone else tells them to. I create art, I experiment, I push the boundaries every day. You sit around desperately clutching to the official, to the canon, to the safe. You’re full of hatred and bile for anything that doesn’t fit into your little dictatorship of the mind, and ready to attack anyone who sees beauty where you cannot.
But I don’t pity you, because you annoy me too much. You are the stranglers of art, and my purpose is to defeat you, to drown your screeching in a flood of beauty.
So fuck off, because I’m busy.
P
/ April 21, 2010“his vivid and heartbreaking characters”
I think in that sentence you say everything one need know about what you want in your novels.
With regard to my accusation that Rowling writes in clichés (you conveniently elide the grammatical and syntactical critiques, and that’s because they’re undeniable, but I’ll forgive you this), let us just take the first novel. “Stretch [his/her] legs” is used on at least two dozen occasions as a substitute for “walk”; why? The names are quite bizarre, to be sure, but that’s not enough not to recommend a book; what’s worse is the delight Rowling takes in making the names quirky, in the throbbing nostalgia she has for a bygone England where in fact the students wore robes. It’s really quite pathetic, ignoring the fact that her dialogue (and King’s) may be the most painfully artless I’ve ever read, all about friendship and love and darkness and the like–tailor-made for the movies, as it were. And yes, if that’s the question you wish to ask, I do detest television; I do not detest situational comedy, or good comedy in general, and neither does Harold Bloom–he loves the Marx brothers, actually, something you would know had you actually read anything of his. He does not believe in the death of art, he does not say it’s bad to read or that the novel is dead–he celebrates it, and the fact that you threw The Western Canon as you say you did only bears the point out.
As for Zadie Smith, she’s a writer of what a critic, James Wood, termed “hysterical realism”–where the characters become no longer realistic but so endued in symbolism that they come off as farcical, as vessels for a message rather than actual breathing characters. Which is what Harry Potter is–Harry, anointed by destiny but not quite brave enough; Hermione, the “smart” girl who can’t even be understood by her bumbling male companions–Lucy from the Peanuts; and Ron, of course, “the bumbling male companion,” the Charlie Brown of the bunch, so pathetic he’s almost cuddly.
Look, you can continue to cleave to your misguided ideas of what the novel is, or should do, or what good writing is. That’s fine. But just to leave you with a little story about Shakespeare, since you seem to think you know anything about him… In the Globe theater, the cheapest seats were standing up right before the stage. They cost one pence. These people were ironically called the “understanders”–both because they literally stood under the stage, and because they were so woefully uneducated that they could not understand and were there only for the duels and war sequences. You are an understander. Thank you–and there’s no need to respond any further because any breath spent on you is wasted breath.
Jonas
/ April 21, 2010Yes, I do. And you say everything that is wrong with your view of art.
First of all, you don’t get to forgive me for anything, you little shit. Who do you think you are? God? You’re just a pathetic troll posting aggressive comments on someone else’s blog. And second, I actually responded to your ridiculous critique. It is not your place to decide what grammatical rules a writer or poet has to follow. Will you blame William Blake for his unusual spelling now? Or Milton for his strange, Latin-inspired sentence structures?
Why not? It all depends on the size of the novel and what an author is trying to accomplish.
Oh dear, it’s imagination. We can’t have that, can we?
What is wrong with the quirky names, then? What is wrong with delight, other than that you can’t stand it?
Oh, that old argument. Fantastic. Because the books are completely uncritical of the school environment portrayed, are they? And because clearly the books tell us that things would be better if we went back to those times.
Portraying something does not mean wishing to go actually go back to it.
You seem to have a really terrible sense of realistic dialogue, then. Especially when it comes to King, whose skills in that department are remarkable. Not that you’ve read any of his work.
Oh, you mean about real subjects? Not all about Sebastian rearranging matches?
Bravo, you’re an idiot who cannot distinguish between the medium and the content and knows nothing about the great art that has been created for television over the years.
I do know that. What makes you assume that I don’t? But what’s so much better about the Marx brothers than so much later comedy, though, other than that the Marx brothers were long enough ago to be fashionable with the snotty crowd?
Clearly you’ve never actually *read* Zadie Smith, and have read only reviews or academic texts about White Teeth. So you’re talking out of your arse, or rather out of other people’s arses. You have no opinion of your own, but are simply regurgitating the opinions of others.
Furthermore, you didn’t even understand the (good but occasionally rather muddle-headed) essay by Wood, which is not actually about symbolism at all, but about the tendency of modern novels to go for verbal and conceptual pyrotechnics over real character development. And it actually praises Smith as well as criticizing her. Oh, and do you know who is included in the list of people accused by Woods of hysterical realism? Don DeLillo, whom you were praising so highly in your previous post. Shot yourself in the foot there, didn’t you?
How about next time you read the essay before you write? Because you embarrassed yourself a bit there. Arguments should always be on the basis of the text and all that.
I love how you can see things only as abstractions, as neatly categorized clichés that fit your worldview. Of course they can never have depth if you have already decided exactly who they are.
Oh no, another thing I knew when I was a kid. You’re impressing me so much.
I am? You’re the one who is so woefully uneducated that you can only argue by dropping names and repeating what others told you. You couldn’t even admit that you haven’t read Zadie Smith, and had to regurgitate someone else’s words, which you don’t even understand and which, when read, disprove your point. You persist in pretending that I have no literary education or knowledge, and refuse to actually use any arguments or respond to any of my questions or criticisms. Your posts are little but a collection of whiny and pretentious complaints about how you don’t like two writers, and personal attacks upon a person you know nothing about.
The irony finally becomes almost unbearable with your little story about the understanders. You’re exactly what you are describing – unable to see past the duels and war sequences (or the monsters and the magic) to all the beauty and deeper meaning. If you’d lived in Shakespeare’s times, you would have said that Shakespeare “lacked art” and was just a populist, and would have bothered other people with aggressive comments about how Chaucer was really so much better. You’d even be complaining about Shakespeare’s annoying tendency to make up new words, and all the delight he took in it.
My dear boy, this is my blog, and you’re the one who is posting comments. I will respond as I see fit, and right now your shallow arrogance is still amusing me. If it ceases to, I will ban you.
P
/ April 22, 2010My dear, you really are obtuse–what’s more fascinating, though, is that you seem to delight in your stupidity. This is my final reply, so let’s get it all out:
(1) Shakespeare was NOT a populist. Decidedly not. First of all, the word “populist” has political connotations–indeed is explicitly political–and refers to a movement that sprang up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century in the United States, which had its roots in all sorts of peasant revolts, from the smallest in Flanders to ostensibly the largest, the French Revolution. Shakespeare was not a populist. If he were (oh, there’s that subjunctive whose Ms. Rowling so assiduously denies) a populist (whatever the hell your definition of that word is), he would not be remembered today in the light that he is. Shakespeare characterized with economy; he did not offend the reader with excessive description of the character and operated through ellipsis–take Hamlet, for instance, whose true thoughts, despite all of the monologues, are never really disclosed to the reader, nor the true motivation for his revenge. Or Iago or Don John, characters Coleridge dubbed “motiveless malignances,” about whose rationales for their actions there are only scattered hints that sometimes belie one another so that the reader is left to make up his own mind. Or Sir John Falstaff, whose past is only partly dredged up in “The Merry Wives of Windsor,” and who remains a mischievous mystery throughout Henry IV… Where in Harry Potter are there characters of this magnitude, sketched with such mastery? But of course to ask that Rowling do something like that would be unfair, so let’s lower the bar. Given me the Quentin Compson in Harry Potter, give me the memorable protagonist in a single Stephen King novel that does not sink under the weight of the never-ending roulades of gore and vulgarity apropos of nothing? What character will be remembered as a cultural icon, either for good or ill, in the way Madame Defarge has been, or Miss Havisham, or Fagin, or, for American examples, Harry Angstrom or, to speak finally of a real populist, Tom Joad? The point is there isn’t. Their characterization is shallow and based on the laziest archetypes, their symbolism mealy-mouthed or nonexistent, their style completely devoid of originality (nothing in Harry Potter says, hey, Rowling wrote this and not X), and their dialogue filled with bromides that approach more the way people speak on TV than in reality.
Where is Beckett’s famous aporia? Where is Joyce’s wild prose? Where are Saramago’s sinuous sentences or Faulkner’s vivid imagery and stream-of-consciousness? Where Woolf’s patience and ellipsis? Nowhere. And since you mention Blake’s peculiar spellings and omissions sometimes of apostrophes from contractions and genitive cases, I love it. I also love it when Emily Dickinson, who was profoundly influenced by him, does the same thing–and the way she–hyphenates–so–often–which–is–something–distinctive about her poetry. These things are ORIGINAL. The serious writer strives for ORIGINALITY–and feels a profound sense of anxiety in entering the pantheon of serious writers because of the pervasive sense that every original idea has already been spoken for. Harold Bloom writes of this–in fact, it is his main line of discourse. Where is this originality in Rowling’s prose? In King’s? Again, nowhere. It doesn’t exist. There’s nothing that challenges any boundaries–and that’s because neither is a serious writer, and so neither strives for originality. And please do not be patronizing–you really have no grounds to be. I have a degree in Russian literature, so your haranguing me about Tolstoy’s anxieties concerning Shakespeare (felt likewise by everyone from Milton to Joyce) is really quite pointless and more than a bit self-congratulatory. Which is not to say self-congratulation is a bad thing–it’s only bad when it is as hopelessly, risibly misplaced as it clearly is in your situation.
(2) Why is it in response to my criticism that Rowling’s themes are superficial and childish you feel the need to reference Eddie Izzard of all people? Really? That is the weapon you opt to wield in a literary discussion? It doesn’t really answer the question, of course, nor does it make the criticism any less legitimate. Rowling does write about mundane things–which would be fine, a lot of writers do it, but the problem is she writes about mundane things mundanely. Such is the mawkishness, such the shameless (and probably unwitting) lugubriousness of her writing, which skips gleefully from one cliché to another, that it becomes almost comical–like “Dumbledore’s” glum pronouncements, which read like bad fortune cookies. Darkness is not a theme, for goodness’s sake; that is stultifyingly broad. There is darkness explored in good literature–like Emma Bovary’s cloisteredness, her desire for freedom which she satisfies through her adulterous relationship with Rodolphe and Léon; like, well, the ultimate tale of revenge, “Paradise Lost,” which examines no less than the fall of man; the tedium that constantly courts Bernardo Soares in Pessoa’s masterful “The Book of Disquiet” or the immorality and anonymity of life in the city that assails Malte Laurids Brigge in Rilke’s “The Notebooks”–but it is not carried out as Rowling does it–to wit, superficially. Rowling takes darkness, which is difficult to say with a straight face, prima facie; her point of departure is that it exists–that there are good guys and bad guys and that good wins in the end. She does not plumb the depths of darkness, she skims over the surface of it. Revenge is bad but so are discrimination and wizard-vs.-muggle supremacy, etc. etc., and so the story goes, trying desperately to latch on to something that will make it ‘serious’ without realizing that it can never be serious ipso facto because it consists of stitched-together platitudes and archetypes and conceits extracted directly from Lewis and Tolkien. It’s, simply put, dreadfully executed. You mention G.K. Chesterton, a writer I admire a great deal. He deals with darkness in a different way, though, as in “The Man Who Was Thursday.” Who is Sunday, who never reveals himself? And in portraying as he does the machinations of each of the other anarchists, each trying to subvert the other, what point does he make? Does Rowling do anything remotely like this? Of course not. And of course that’s the whole point.
(3) It is a bit sanctimonious of you to accuse me of saying you haven’t read such and such a thing, and then do the exact thing to me–I have read Zadie Smith’s “White Teeth” and I find her to be a bit torn as to what she wants to do exactly–whether she wants to write a sprawling social novel in the tradition of Dickens and Thackeray, or whether she wants something more Joycean or, for a more contemporary example (one cited as a major influence for his category by Wood, especially for Foster Wallace) Pynchonian. Moreover, Wood, in that essay–which I have read, by the way–did not specifically focus on Don DeLillo, but passingly alluded to “Underworld” (at the time of the publication of that article, that was his latest novel) in four instances, not once fleshing the critique, or even in fact building any kind of critique beyond mentioning him–you might, of course, call that pseudo-academic namedropping because your anti-intellectual bent is such that it blinds you to anything that isn’t readily digestible and syrupy enough. Don DeLillo wrote several great novels all of which clock in at fewer than 320 pages–”White Noise,” as I mentioned before, which is on par with the best of Beckett for its sheer tragicomic force, but also “Mao II” and his debut, “Americana.” Please do not attempt to intimate that I have not read something which I have read on more than one occasion (despite my not being especially fond of Wood), and moreover to say that because I draw different conclusions about a work that I have only read the reviews or critical reaction. As for his verdict on Smith, Wood prefers (from what I’ve read by him in “How Fiction Works” and “The Broken Estate”) the low-key novel, stylized but not to outlandish lengths–something like “Mrs. Dalloway” or “Austerlitz,” both of which he writes decent essays about–which again, I have read. He admits she has a vigorous writing style, that she has talent, just doesn’t like what she channels that talent toward. Anything that ends with this rather strident critique is hardly laudatory:
“This is problem-solving, all right. But at what cost? As Irie disappears under the themes and ideas, the reader perhaps thinks wistfully of Mr. Micawber and David Copperfield, so uncovered by theme and idea, so uninsured, weeping together in an upstairs room.” Irie disappears under the weight of the message, goes his tack, the symbolism of her circumstances–which is what I was referring to previously. This is not a rave review; it is perfunctory praise at best that Wood offers Smith. Nevertheless, you’re free to construe it as you will–just not to imply that I haven’t read it.
Although I’ve said I won’t reply further, I really am quite eager to read yours.
P
/ April 22, 2010whose existence*
P
/ April 22, 2010not once fleshing the critique out*
Verena Kyratzes
/ April 22, 2010Dear P,
I would like to thank you for your delightful and much-needed words. You have indeed made my day more pleasant. Have you considered a career as a stand-up comedian? I believe talent such as yours should be shared with the world.
Yours truly,
Verena Kyratzes
Jonas
/ April 22, 2010You’re so friendly. Really a sign of intellect.
You continue to fail to understand the most simple things. It’s sad, really. Though it is kind of hilarious how you try to make Shakespeare into this grand intellectual hero who wrote only for you, who was never popular with the lower classes, and who never wrote a single poo joke. (How exactly do you explain Shakespeare’s fondness for what you would surely term crass and vulgar comedy?)
Why am I even arguing with you when you clearly know nothing of King’s work? Clearly you imagine King to be a writer who writes about nothing but violence and gore; this is absurd at best, willfully ignorant at worst. ARGUE FROM THE TEXT, not out of your own prejudice.
This is so absurd that it cannot be answered. You are simply projecting your own ideas onto these writers. You seem to have read some Rowling and hated the experience (or rather wanted to hate it, because you were told to), but you’ve certainly never read King, or read only one of the short stories (which are not his forte).
As for characters that will be remembered – I don’t know, I guess there’s Harry Potter. And Dumbledore. And several other characters from Rowling’s work. But that’s what you don’t want to admit, that’s what kills you. Just like it killed the pretentious academics of one hundred years ago that the characters of Dickens should be remembered.
Actually, there is plenty of King’s clean and elegant prose, his power to realistically capture spoken language, his complex treatment both of the frailties and strengths of humanity, and an optimism tempered with the knowledge that life is often painful and tragic. There is philosophical and theological depth, there are adult considerations of parenthood and sexuality, and there is a great deal of thought about the nature of art. But you wouldn’t know that.
I’m not sure it’s something to love or hate, but good for you.
Indeed they do. I don’t know a single writer whose work can be compared to King’s Dark Tower.
Really? Let’s take Blake. Do you think this absurd generalisation applied to him?
Some writers may feel a sense of profound anxiety. Others feel confidence in what they do, in their vision. To generalise is to be an idiot.
Everywhere.
Everywhere.
Because you say so? Because Harold Bloom says so? You haven’t even read King, and neither has Bloom.
You’re being condescending, the first response of the intellectually stale. You keep accusing me of being stupid, thereby attempting to highlight your own intellectual prowess. It’s pathetic.
I don’t give a shit about your degree, kid. I know too many people with degrees, and I spent too much time at university, to care about such things. I care only for arguments from logic and for evidence. You have neither so far.
It is not pointless or self-congratulatory, because it has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with your arguments. You keep trying to make this personal. It is not. You cannot really attack my arguments, so you attack me instead.
Yes. If I’m going to quote someone, why not quote a genius?
You say so. I disagree. How do you prove that you are right? By your divinely bestowed better taste?
You know, now you’re sounding hilariously close to one of those pretentious self-absorbed critics Fry & Laurie were so fond of making fun of. And again, I would like you to actually argue from the text, because what I remember of the books is a complex and touching deconstruction of the typical “wise mage” – who turns out to be a fallible human after all.
Name-dropping again, are we? How does this prove anything? I am not impressed by your ability to post short summaries of texts you have read. And why do you think you need to explain what Paradise Lost is about?
You’re simplifying to a terrible degree. Rowling makes a big point that it’s *not* just good guys versus bad guys – in fact, your argument seems to indicate you have only read the beginning of the story, if at all. The reality is that the only truly “evil” character in the novels is Voldemort himself, and I don’t see what is wrong with that. The essential question is why others choose to follow him, or not – and the answer to that question is considerably more complex than you think, as evidenced by the story of the Malfoy family.
Wrong. Quite simply wrong. There you go.
Your literary knowledge is failing you again. There are many who have imitated Lewis (a terrible writer) and Tolkien (a brilliant one), but there is very little that Rowling’s work has in common with them, especially with Tolkien. Neither in style nor in subject matter (nor in mythological inspiration) do the Potter books have much in common with The Lord of the Rings or The Silmarillion, and it’s rather foolish to think so. Unless, of course, you believe that anything that features wizards, from The Tempest to Le Morte d’Arthur, is the same.
Your opinion, based mostly on hot air.
Did you read the book to the end?
Actually, I suspect that Chesterton would have been quite fond of Rowling’s work, with its moral questions and underlying belief that the struggle for good is meaningful, if difficult. They are actually quite alike, except in that Rowling generally writes better sentences than Chesterton, who often tended to rush his writing a bit. But I suppose that’s blasphemy, isn’t it?
Interesting how you can understand a writer only in terms of other writers. Not very conductive to originality, of course.
The fact that he doesn’t go into a specific analysis does not prevent Wood from clearly criticizing DeLillo.
This is hilarious. You really want me to be anti-intellectual, don’t you? Then why am I arguing using literary arguments? Why did I spend so much time studying academic subjects? Why do I even know who Harold Bloom and Theodor Adorno are?
Because I’m not anti-intellectual, that’s why. You would love to believe so, but you are just embarrassing yourself. When have I argued that good art must be syrupy and readily digestible? Never. I have spoken only of unnecessary obfuscation, of the kind of dreadful pretentiousness that confuses obscurantism with depth and popularity with a lack of quality.
My favourite poet is and remains William Blake. Is his work easily digestible? Is his work syrupy?
I have no quarrel with the classics, or with intertextuality, or with challenging prose. I wouldn’t spend so much of my time dealing with all these things if I did, and they certainly wouldn’t be such a presence in my own work.
My quarrel is with those who argue in bad faith, from prejudice instead of the text. My quarrel is with those who fashionably despise everything popular without thought, without analysis; who cannot see beauty or art unless they’ve been told to.
You keep trying to portray me as an uneducated idiot, but I’m as widely read as you are, I have an academic background, and I’ve heard everything you’re saying before. I simply object to it, not out of anti-intellectualism, but because I find it to be intellectually lazy and badly thought-through. Can you understand that? I disagree with you on intellectual and artistic grounds.
Well, it’s hard to think otherwise when most of your talking points have no connection to the reality of the texts you are quoting and/or attacking.
You have yet to use any arguments that boil down to more than “I don’t like these writers and you are an idiot.” Your obsession with attacking me personally – rather than attacking my logic – simply reinforces the weakness of your perspective.
I suspect that, like Bloom, you have read very little of King or Rowling, and simply place them in the vast category of Popular Fiction, which you despise – like television.
Let me leave you on a little story. I’ve spent the last four years teaching people about academic writing, stressing the importance of clarity and simplicity, of clear arguments and consistent logic. I could’ve used your posts as a clear example of how not to write – endless lists of names and summaries to prove your intellectual worth, personal attacks in arrogant language that in no way support or strengthen your thesis, and a complete lack of anything resembling actual arguments. Behind the obfuscation lies nothing but childishness and aggression, as if you were suffering from some kind of intellectual inferiority syndrome.
We could go on ad nauseam, but what would be the point? All you have to say is that you think me intellectually inferior to yourself for liking two authors that you despise, and for believing that there is no causal connection between complexity of form and quality of content. Incapable of arguing with me on an intellectual level, you seek to argue from authority – namely, the authority of being able to cram as many names and references into your posts as will fit, and disparaging my ability to think instead of the results of my thinking.
You’re a fanatic, and I tire of fanatics.
Evil Roda
/ April 22, 2010Yeah, Jonas, kick that troll’s ass! Kick it hard!
One Last Sketch
/ April 28, 2010An older article, but an important one, and I thank you for writing it. My only caveat is that Harold Bloom and the other “ivory tower” critics are not really doing anything new. The situation, stretching back in the classical period, has almost always involved intellectual critics upholding works in the past and dismissing popular works in the present as “trash.” Thank God, then, that these critics have not actually managed to have their voices heard by “the masses”, and art continues to flourish in new and interesting ways.
As for the above exchange, a quote from Leonardo da Vinci seems appropriate:
“Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.”
Again, thank you, sir, and good day.
Don
/ May 6, 2010Wow, I just stumbled across this, a year after my first post, and am really surprised to see the debate is still going strong. Whatever our disagreements, Jonas, I admire the time and thought you have been putting into your replies.
One important point to make about Bloom’s theory of influence is that is entirely contingent on what future artists will take up as an influence. Bloom has once said in an interview that it is quite possible that Yeats will not survive due to his lack of influence amongst contemporary poets.
I have also heard, through interviews with other younger writers familiar with Bloom, their surprise at his wide knowledge of contemporary writers. Although Bloom may seem to center his energy on a limited number of figures his actual range of reading is incredibly broad (the guy at one time could read 1000 pages an hour, AND remember most of it). It reminds me of a bet put on GK Chesterton, whose critics thought he was snobbish too, and only read the “classics” while dismissing popular books he had never read. Chesterton then went out and read 100 of the most popular books and was able to answer any question relating to them by his critics. When asked what he thought about the experience he stated it was an easy task since they were all so very similar.
Quentin
/ August 9, 2010Wow, was P ever write about Jonas’ abysmal, embarrassingly bad literary taste. Rowling and King are greater artists than the names on P’s list? What a laugh. As Orwell put it, there are some ideas so stupid only an intellectual could believe it.
I went through a King phase in high school, and while he writes entertaining, enjoyable potboilers, potboilers is all they are. And anyone who thinks otherwise is as lead-eared as they come. The logical fallacy here is because Shakespeare was popular and a great artist, today’s most popular writers must necessarily be great artists. Rather than Shakespeare, King’s true peers are the authors of various penny dreadfuls and minor gothics.
And no, King has nothing in common with Shakespeare as an artist. You’d have to be devoid of basic taste and literacy to think otherwise, which Jonas clearly is. Look at how Shakespeare analyzes the problem of evil: evil for Shakespeare is explored in brilliant, unforgettable characters like Macbeth, whereas for King evil is a bunch of zombies in Pet Sematary or a creepy clown in IT. There’s nothing real about it. That’s why his books are scary when you’re 12 or 13 but not when you’re older.
Jonas
/ August 9, 2010It really is hilarious when people who can’t even spell try to lecture others about literature. At first I thought your post was an intentional joke.
Thank you for your argument-free knowledge of The Truth.
Absolutely not what I argued; my argument was about the (lack of) relation between popularity and quality. Think before you write.
Clearly. Because I have a wider and more complex appreciation of literature, and do not exclusively kiss the arses of a group of writers selected by the self-proclaimed masters of literature. Because there is a Western Canon and anyone who disagrees is a tasteless fool.
To anyone with any kind of understanding of literature, or anyone who’s actually read King’s work, those sentences are dreadfully embarrassing. If you really believe It was about a creepy clown, you are sadly incapable of drawing meaning from written sentences. Maybe you should read it again.
Quentin
/ August 9, 2010I knew you would leap on my spelling mistake the moment I saw it. I knew you were petty, shallow, and lazy enough to do that. Wow are you ever obvious, and juvenile. Ever hear of a Freudian slip? I wrote my post in a white-hot flare of anger, and obviously I typed it out fast and wrote “write” instead of “right.” So what? It’s not an essay, it’s a response I wrote in a couple minutes.
“To anyone with any kind of understanding of literature, or anyone who’s actually read King’s work, those sentences are dreadfully embarrassing. If you really believe It was about a creepy clown, you are sadly incapable of drawing meaning from written sentences. Maybe you should read it again.”
Oh in theory it’s about childhood friendship and evil and cruelty in the adult world – it pays lip service to adult themes. But, for those of us who aren’t ignoramuses, philistines, dolts and fools, the Big Themes are touched on only in an exceedingly superficial way. King got the clown idea from John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer who dressed up as a clown and then murdered boys. But the Pennywise/It creature is just a cartoon spook, whereas a great artist like Shakespeare would probe the psychology of a Gacy, find out what makes him tick. You can’t learn a damn thing about what makes the Gacy types tick from reading IT. Again, there’s nothing wrong with that, as long as nobody pretends it’s something other than a potboiler. There’s a place for potboilers, and King is one of our better writers of them. It’s like eating that whole bag of Doritos. Go ahead and eat them: but don’t pretend Doritos are great food with surpassing nutritional value. People who argue for King as some magisterial artist are like nutritionists who argue that Big Macs, Taco Bell, Oreos and potato chips constitute a healthy, balanced diet. Nothing wrong with eating junk food or fast food once in a while, but don’t kid yourself about what you’re eating.
The difference, of course, is you have to know something to be a nutrionist, whereas any idiot can offer their judgment on art. That’s why so many philistines and ignoramuses gravitate to arts, and even more towards arts appreciation. It’s a field where you can be as stupid and self-indulgent as you want to be, without receiving and scorn and contempt you deserve.
The fact of the matter is, there were hundreds of writers of penny dreadfuls and gothics in the 19th century who, like King, may have enjoyed great sales, but whose work was quickly forgotten. People remember the popularity of Shakespeare and make too much of it. They don’t realize immense popularity, most of the time, is accorded to escapist and minor art, and most of the greatest writers, especially of modern times, simply are not that popular. It depends what you mean by popularity though: Cormac McCarthy, late in life, became a bestselling writer and Oprah put one of his books on her book club list. So obviously he’s popular enough, just not on King/Rowling levels.
The funniest thing about your astonishingly dumb, ill-informed tirade about “elitists” like Bloom is that when you say this:
“Let me leave you on a little story. I’ve spent the last four years teaching people about academic writing, stressing the importance of clarity and simplicity, of clear arguments and consistent logic. I could’ve used your posts as a clear example of how not to write – endless lists of names and summaries to prove your intellectual worth, personal attacks in arrogant language that in no way support or strengthen your thesis, and a complete lack of anything resembling actual arguments. Behind the obfuscation lies nothing but childishness and aggression, as if you were suffering from some kind of intellectual inferiority syndrome”
your remarks are far more applicable to yourself than to P. It’s obvious that you’re describing yourself here, and you are far more of a narrow-minded, strident fanatic than P is. None of your comments about Bloom are strictly true, and he was more right than not to complain about King – what you (being a fanatic) didn’t notice is that he wasn’t primarily griping about King’s sales figures (he wrote a slightly more positive assessment of King’s novels years earlier as an intro to a volume of literary criticism about King), he was complaining about King winning a prestigious literary prize because of his sales, not his artistic merit. It’s obvious that reviewers are usually too afraid to go against the tide with a popular hit (it’s fine if you love Rowling, but read the reviews and it’s obvious some of the reviewers were lying through their teeth in pronouncing Harry Potter a modern classic: there’s a sense of “sign here” now when it comes to hugely successful bestsellers – you better swing in line or else…). Popularity and commerce trump everything else. That’s what was behind King winning that lifetime achievement award, and that’s what Bloom was upset about.
And he’s dead right that Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo, Philip Roth, and the half dozen other names mentioned by one of your posters are far better writers than King (I only read the first Harry Potter, which was decent enough for what it was, but it’s a kiddie book and written for kids). There’s lots of in-depth criticism of these writers to back up his claim too, while there’s none for Rowling or King.
Jonas
/ August 9, 2010Which doesn’t change the wonderful irony of it. Maybe you should think about what those white-hot flares of anger are doing to your brain. (And you know what? It’s not petty at all to point out the irony of someone making a typo after accusing someone else of stupidity and illiteracy. It’s not an argument about literature, certainly, but it’s a valid observation about your behaviour, tone and self-importance.)
You’re still missing the point. It is about the children, not about the creature. You’re just being attracted by what’s shiny and obvious. If It was about the monster, the monster wouldn’t change shapes.
What I find so disturbing is your naked desire for King’s work not to be art, not to be valuable. It seems to drive you absolutely potty that anyone might think so. Such negativity. It must be a potboiler, or else all is lost! Well, I don’t think so. I don’t buy it. I don’t particularly enjoy what you call “potboilers,” and I do enjoy King’s work – aesthetically and intellectually.
This is everyone else, right? Everyone but the Enlightened Few deserves scorn and contempt. How hateful.
None of what you say here contradicts my arguments. I’ve never claimed that popularity is a sign of quality. I’ve merely argued that it’s also not a sign of a lack thereof.
Do you know what is better than insults? Logic. And arguments.
I am? I am a fanatic for wanting the value of more writers to be recognized, rather than screaming about excluding everything and everyone who has a different approach? Do you see me namedropping? Do you see me making grand pronouncements without argument or logic? Do you see me making this a personal issue, rather than a literary one?
What the hell does that mean?
If he does so by attacking King’s work rather than the reviewers or prizegivers, he deserves criticism.
What does that have to do with King’s work, and Bloom’s attacks? Nothing. Instead of having a healthy dislike of commercialism (which is something I would share), Bloom hates writers for being popular. (Though I’m certain he hates King, and other writers, for more than that.)
And I do not have the right to disagree? If I disagree, as a reader and lover (and writer) of literature, I must therefore be an illiterate idiot? Only the Western Canon matters, and everything else is Entartete Kunst?
Great way of talking about children’s literature. “A kiddie book.” Now I can take you seriously.
Oh, and that is an argument. When I point out that the critical establishment is prejudiced against certain writers, the counter-argument is that said critical establishment has produced no academic essays about these writers? It’s a good thing not everyone thinks like that, or we would have no Dickens or Blake.
Why is it that all these supposed “defenders of true literature” can manage nothing but “You’re an idiot, you’re so stupid, la la la,”-type arguments? Every other post here is filled with haughty proclamations about my stupidity, my lack of knowledge and my general illiteracy, and hollow assertions about various writers. I think it says rather a lot that you respond only with insults and anger. If this was a discussion about literature, we would be talking about literature. But it’s not. It’s a discussion about status, and all you can come up with is personal insults.
Quentin
/ August 9, 2010“I am a fanatic for wanting the value of more writers to be recognized, rather than screaming about excluding everything and everyone who has a different approach?”
You don’t want more writers recognized, you want your own junky tastes validated. Go back and read the crap you posted earlier. Go back and re-read your own bullshit arguments and see how flimsy and almost non-existent the logic is.
Here’s a sample of your so-called “argument”:
“Not only do they have a terrible idea of what makes a good novel (something as obscurantist and incomprehensibly written as possible, with little to nothing real to say about the world), they also want the novel to be dead.”
Who did Bloom name in his piece as great writers?: Philip Roth, Thomas Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, Don DeLillo. Another poster mentioned other writers he admires like John Banville, A.S. Byatt, Will Self, and others. Of all these writers, the only one who employs a difficult, obscure, send-you-to-the-dictionary vocabulary (sometimes) is McCarthy. Pynchon is sometimes difficult because of his sentence structure and some of the content. The others are not “obscurantist” at all. Whether you like Bloom’s choices or not, a good three-quarters of them write a plain, fairly easy, readable style – Philip Roth is hardly difficult reading stylistically – and only a couple of them are difficult on a grammatical, syntactical level. So your assertion is demonstrable bullshit. Of all these writers, only McCarthy is truly peculiar and daunting in his style, and did you notice even despite that fact, Oprah still picked him for her bookclub?
The laughable thing about fake populists like yourself is that you deign to speak on behalf of the poor, oppressed populace, you arrogantly and narcissistically pose as some sort of noble democrat and truth-teller, yet the populace is capable of responding to difficult texts (what you, but not necessarily they, consider affected prose) more than you think. Oprah’s not exactly Ms. Snooty Highbrow (she’s made a career out of her ability to reach the masses) yet she read McCarthy’s The Road, loved it, and made it one of her Book Club picks as well as reading some his other novels because of how much she enjoyed his writing. You think she’d say of Stephen King’s writing that “it’s like poetry to me” and contains sentences she wanted to savor and luxuriate in?
Oprah also admires Toni Morrison, who did employ an obscure style in Beloved, but not in her earlier work. You seem to think because a writer writes one or two books in an experimental style they must be so inaccessible. None of the living authors Bloom has singled out for praise are truly incomprehensible at all. In fact, in the long run, they’ll be a lot more readable than King or Rowling. If you don’t believe that, try reading the popular fiction of 100 years ago. Most of it’s much less readable today than the “hard,” “difficult,” “elite” writers of that era. It’s much easier today to get into Sister Carrie or The Wings of the Dove (stylistically as well as in terms of content) than the forgotten bestsellers of that time.
“The idea that “no-one reads anymore” and “all the good novels were written in the past” is essential to their understanding of art: that it’s something exclusive that only they and their buddies can understand. If it’s popular (i.e. King or Rowling) then it must be bad.”
Where did you get this idea? You pulled it outta your ass. Kind of funny you accuse other people of having no argument, when you apparently can’t tell the difference between an argument and a mere assertion. Do I have to keep reminding you that Philip Roth, Toni Morrison, and Cormac McCarthy have all written bestsellers? That most of these names have written at least something that made the bestseller lists? Yeah, Bloom has championed some obscure writers, but they are by no means all obscure. Portnoy’s Complaint was a huge bestseller, Roth achieved bestseller status young, and McCarthy achieved massive bestseller status recently – The Road (Oprah BookClub pick), No Country for Old Men (adapted into Oscar-winning movie), All the Pretty Horses. Funny how you keep nattering on about snobs when Bloom’s two fave American writers of today – McCarthy and Roth – have both enjoyed immense popularity at different times in their lives.
“Do you see me namedropping? Do you see me making grand pronouncements without argument or logic? Do you see me making this a personal issue, rather than a literary one?”
Yes, yes, and yes. Namedropping: yes. Grand pronouncements without argument or logic: most definitely. Making it personal: yes. It’s almost laughable how lacking in self-awareness you are: all your posts psychoanalyzing poster “P” are far more apropos when applied to yourself.
Face it: thinking Stephen King writes potboilers isn’t snobbery. It’s good sense. Sure, he’s one of the better, maybe even best, pulp writers out there, but it’s still pulp and not high art. This is not snobbery except in the minds of fake populists like you. I like tons of pop songs I know are just musical cotton candy. I’m not ashamed of it, I just don’t deceive myself that Britney Spears is Bach. That’s all Bloom was mad about: that people have to think of phony reasons to enjoy pulp, that they have to read into it all sorts of depth and richness that isn’t really there, and can’t admit to themselves that cotton candy is cotton candy, and not a full-course meal. The humanities have degenerated to the point where students are studying comic books and Harry Potter instead of taking this brief window of time to study the best that has been thought and written. This “entartung” (yes it’s real and not imaginary) is cheating young people of their right to a real education.
“Why is it that all these supposed “defenders of true literature” can manage nothing but “You’re an idiot, you’re so stupid, la la la,”-type arguments? Every other post here is filled with haughty proclamations about my stupidity, my lack of knowledge and my general illiteracy, and hollow assertions about various writers. I think it says rather a lot that you respond only with insults and anger.”
As if your original post on Bloom consisted of anything other than insults and anger. And if you had a modicum more self-awareness, you might realize that “defenders of true literature” HAVE made far more in-depth and compelling arguments, but ostriches like you will never seek them out. There have been countless defenses of the value of art from time immemorial, at least from Plato and Aristotle onwards. Obviously a blog entry isn’t the place to do it. There are countless strong, powerful defenses of art, but a horse has to go willingly to where the water is. Don’t blame me or P if you choose to hold fast to your place in the desert.
Jonas
/ August 10, 2010Validated? Who are you, or Harold Bloom, to validate anything? I do not recognize your authority.
There is more to it than grammar and sentence structure; but I’m also not claiming that these authors are all bad (except McCarthy, but only the few bits I’ve read, which aren’t enough for me to fully make up my mind). Neither am I talking specifically about these authors, but about the general direction of writing that is praised as “better” and about the mindset that produces this irrational hatred.
Ummm… so? That actually fits perfectly well with my argument.
The real irony is that you clearly have no idea about me or my beliefs or my work. The idea that people are fully capable of responding to difficult texts is an integral part of my understanding of art. You’re simply projecting your hatreds onto me, just like P. was, with his “your meagre diet of Gaiman.” You don’t even see what I’m trying to say, or where I’m arguing from. You assume that I think like you, that if I like King I must therefore despise everything else.
If she read it without the kind of prejudice that people like Bloom inject into people’s heads, yes. King is an intensely lyrical writer. It’s just not the kind of lyricism you prefer; which is fine, if you didn’t try to impose your ideal of beauty on everyone else. I see the same complexity and beauty in rock’n'roll that I see in classical music; you’re the fanatic who only wants the one to be truly beautiful.
No. Irrelevant.
Dickens?
But yes, this is true of many books from that time period, at least in English.
True, it’s not an absolute situation (what is?), and often has to do equally much with whether the book is considered to be a “bestseller” or simply “commercially successful” – I’m talking a cultural narrative (can’t stand the term, but I suppose it fits) here, one in which books get classified into “pop culture” and “high art.” Something which I find despicable and historically absurd, as I’ve tried to elucidate.
Where?
Where, except in sarcastic self-defence against people who are going out of their way to offend me in vicious language on my own blog?
No, it is snobbery. And thinking that anyone who disagrees with you is therefore illiterate is more than arrogant: it’s a quasi-fascist mindset. It’s the passionate desire to devalue what others consider to be beautiful, because your taste must be superior.
I do not believe in this distinction. Nothing in my studies of literature or my experience as a writer has ever lead me to the conclusion that it’s a meaningful way of thinking. There is certainly art that is successful and art that is not, and some works of art are deeper than others, but this distinction between low and high art is despicable and (this being the main thrust of my original post) utterly destructive to our appreciation and understanding of literature.
How am I a populist for defending so unpopular a notion? Or do you mean because I’m unwilling to join your little club, the members of which have the right to disdain everyone else? Sorry. I love literature too much to give in to all this hatred.
And I’m arguing that what you call cotton candy (King, not Britney Spears, whose work I enjoy not one bit) is actually a delicious full-course meal of a variety you’re simply not used to. I’m not asking you to stop reading Roth or even McCarthy; I’m just saying that the mindset so clearly represented by Harold Bloom is destructive to literature, because it makes people miss the beauty in so many writers.
Ah, comic books, the bane of literature and the old fall-back of every reactionary. You know, they said the same thing about studying Dickens.
And it’s not even true. People are studying Harry Potter and comic books? Give me a break. Sure, these things are occasionally discussed in some progressive universities (to raised eyebrows from the rest of the faculty), but they are in no way the majority of what is taught. They’re not even a minority.
In fact, one major problem I see is that the tools students are taught are not applied to such vast amounts of great literature because it is considered to be “low” and thus beyond meaningful analysis. And so they’re stuck reading yet another Jane Austen book that means nothing to them, or writing the millionth essay about Philip Roth.
But of course, unlike you, I don’t want to see these writers banned. I merely want an expansion of what is studied and appreciated.
I do not need your defense of art, because I have never attacked art, because I’ve spent most of my life enjoying art and thinking about it – and reading about it, too. My belief in art is much stronger than yours, because I approach art with the desire for beauty and meaning, and do not treat it as a status symbol. That is the whole point of this blog post, and why I waste my time with angry little trolls. I believe in art, in all its complexity and variety. I believe it can be entertaining and deep at the same time. I believe it can go to the furthest extremes of language and be successful, or use the everyday language of the people to create equally deep beauty. I believe people a hundred years ago from now will laugh at the absurdity of not considering King a brilliant and serious writer, as we laugh at so many outdated similar opinions from a hundred years ago. And I believe that people like Harold Bloom, who spend so much time telling others what is and what is not art, are the only ones who are likely to cause the death of art he likes going on about. They are the people art needs to be defended from.
Quentin
/ August 10, 2010“Neither am I talking specifically about these authors, but about the general direction of writing that is praised as “better” and about the mindset that produces this irrational hatred.”
This is exactly like that dumb rant published by B.R. Myers: A Reader’s Manifesto, where he claimed only self-consciously “fine writing” gets overpraised. It’s true that that often happens, even when the writing is bad. But Myers claimed novels that are plot-driven page-turners are always shortchanged. Evidently he’s never looked at the book review pages and seen that more often than not, Stephen King’s novels got good notices, as did James Ellroy or Thomas Harris (for Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs) or Martin Cruz Smith (for Gorky Park) or Ruth Rendell or the Danish writer Peter Hoeg – near universal raves in Hoeg’s case – for his one attempt at a thriller (Smilla’s Sense of Snow/Miss Smilla’s Feeling For Snow). It’s really only the ultra-hack-y likes of John Grisham or James North Patterson or Robert Ludlum who got critically trounced, and for good reason. It’s certainly very easy for a writer of thrillers or melodramas to garner great notices if they write well. King has never been critically shortchanged – where exactly did those dozens of breathless blurbs come from adorning my paperback copies of The Shining or IT? – he’s never been treated with the derision someone like Grisham often received.
But resenters like you and Myers have to hold this big pity-party and claim that genre writers are so hard done by.
I’m not sure how this decade will ultimately pan out, but enough time has passed now to see that critics and reviewers in the 90s enthusiastically embraced such writers as Haruki Murakami and Peter Hoeg, essentially for writing fast-paced, intensely readable thrillers and melodramas. Since they did it very well, they got great reviews. It’s hard to think of any other Japanese or Danish novelist who made more headway into American consciousness during that time period.
In the case of King, many good reviews came his way all throughout his career. What didnt come his way is the assumption that he’s a great immortal writer for the ages. You accuse me and P and Bloom of being resentful, but really the resentment and pettiness is yours. King always WAS treated fairly. It’s you – his incensed fan – who wants him to be canonized as one of the greats. But he’s on the level of a better-than-usual pop writer, he’s not a great artist. I read many of his novels as a kid – I enjoyed them but I have no desire to reread them. The comparisons with Dickens and Shakespeare are out of line and absurd. A better comparison might be with H.P. Lovecraft or O. Henry, although even there I’m not sure King will last as long.
“You know, they said the same thing about studying Dickens.”
See, this is the problem with you. You’ve bought into some phony populist “truth” about the past. You claim “they said the same thing about Dickens.” Who’s “they”? The only critic with a major rep I’ve ever read who argued against the centrality of Dickens was F.R. Leavis, who was not popular among his peers and whose eccentric tastes were mostly attacked and not supported.
Contrary to what you assert, “they” did not say this about Dickens. It’s simply not true that Dickens was widely perceived as a lowbrow hack. I don’t deny that many great authors are underappreciated in their lifetime (usually commercially unsuccessful ones, like Melville, not bestselling ones, like Bulwer-Lytton), but the Leavisite attitude to Dickens was ALWAYS a MINORITY position.
Contrary to your claim, the highbrows – like G.K. Chesterton, in many ways the Harold Bloom of his day – greatly admired Dickens for his capacious imagination.
Your claims about Shakespeare are also false. More urban legend you’ve naively bought into:
“I never claimed that he was remembered as a populist – I just remarked that in his own time, people like you would probably have accused him of being one. You do know that his reputation as the greatest playwright and poet of all time developed later, right? In his own time, he was considered good, but others were generally considered better. And his plays were popular plays, enjoyed by and produced for a wide audience.”
This is yet more tripe. Yes, there were one or two dramatists, at the time of his death, who many ranked more highly than him, like Ben Jonson (who nonetheless wrote, in a statement that was uncontroversial, “he was not of an age but for all time”), but we’re talking one or two out of the forty or so working playwrights of his era. Shakespeare WAS considered one of the two or three top names out of several dozen contemporaries: he may not have been universally ranked #1 (though some did think that), but he was certainly considered #2 or #3. Sometime between 1616 and 1623, a poet wrote another UNCONTROVERSIAL celebration of Shakespeare’s merit, in verse, which like Jonson’s appreciation declared that Shakespeare was as good as it gets:
“Renowned Spenser, lie a thought more nigh
To learned Chaucer, and rare Beaumont lie
A little nearer Spenser to make room
For Shakespeare in your threefold, fourfold tomb.”
So he’s saying Shakespeare is of the same eminence as Spenser and Chaucer, who were the two greatest poets in English. This is shortly after Shakespeare’s death. And it was the UNCONTROVERSIAL, MAINSTREAM view. Stop buying into your populist fantasies and look at the facts: Shakespeare was NEVER widely regarded, by his contemporaries or immediate successors, as a pulp writer the way King, justifiably, is.
So once again you’re talking nonsense.
“I believe people a hundred years ago from now will laugh at the absurdity of not considering King a brilliant and serious writer, as we laugh at so many outdated similar opinions from a hundred years ago.”
The only examples of these “outdated similar opinions” from the past you’ve provided are Shakespeare and Dickens, both of which are false examples since very few people, in actual fact, DID hold such opinions. Only a few highbrows actually thought this way about Dickens & almost nobody ever thought this way about Shakespeare.
Jonas
/ August 10, 2010Again, you’re missing the point. I’m talking about a) the general understanding of art and b) academic reaction which helps shape said understanding. Book reviews are only part of the issue.
Furthermore, a “positive” book review can perpetuate the stereotypes you hold so dear just as well as a “negative” one.
See? The problem is you’re thinking this about one Stephen King fan going nuts about his favourite writer. I’m talking about something bigger and more complex, about a general attitude towards literature, but you just want to turn me into your little pet cliché. King was an example, not the point.
Out of line? Thank you, Mr. Literature Policeman.
The Harold Bloom of his day? I rather think that if Bloom were alive back then, he’d hate Chesterton with a passion. Chesterton, incidentally, who wrote about Dickens that “so many considered [him] to be at the best a vulgar enthusiast” and whose serious writings about Dickens are by many considered to be the beginning of modern Dickens scholarship?
What is this obsession with King? I never compared King to Shakespeare. I was talking about the way that our understanding of the value of a writer or literary work shifts over time. Of course there were people who thought that Shakespeare was great. But his fame/position was nothing like what it is today, and neither was he appreciated only by an elite few. He was, if you will, the equivalent of a really brilliant Hollywood writer/director. But I’m sure that strikes you as vulgar and outlandish and possibly illegal.
Quentin
/ August 10, 2010“Of course there were people who thought that Shakespeare was great. But his fame/position was nothing like what it is today, and neither was he appreciated only by an elite few. He was, if you will, the equivalent of a really brilliant Hollywood writer/director.”
This is one of those unexamined articles of faith that sounds like it’s true, but just doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny. Shakespeare was just like Steven Spielberg or Alfred Hitchcock. No he wasn’t (and I say that as a fan of Hitchcock). This is one of those myths that get recycled and recycled till it becomes conventional wisdom, but sorry, it’s just not true (Dickens is a closer parallel).
Nobody’s position with contemporaries is identical to what it may become decades or centuries later. Homer was not “the immortal Homer” a mere five years after writing The Iliad. The Divine Comedy of Dante wasn’t considered “divine” yet a mere six weeks after it was written. Duh! The point is, this poem that can be pinpointed to within a decade after Shakespeare’s death, possibly even the year of his death, compared him – in an attitude that was uncontroversial – to Chaucer and Spenser. In other words, it claimed (sometime between the years 1616 and 1623) he was one of the all-time greats of English literature.
This is how his contemporaries perceived him. He was NEVER seen, at any time, as strictly a popular writer, as King generally is. And many other writers of the time were. Of course you can be both popular and great, but the point is, most people like King (if they do like him) because they think his books are fun, not deep. The reason no criticism has been written exhausting King’s rich, profound depths is that they’re not there. And that’s fine: just as it’s fine to make a summer popcorn movie and not Rashomon. It IS wrong, though, for critics and tastemakers (who ought to know better) to treat the popcorn movie as if it were Rashomon.
Shakespeare, by contrast, was always generally understood, by groundlings and the supposed “elite” alike, as a serious artist, not necessarily Dramaturgo Numero Uno, but right up there with the best that English literature had to offer. His contemporaries DID understand that he was not just writing escapist pulp, even if they didn’t fully grasp the various layers and meanings. I will reiterate that I have read a lot of King and I think he’s better than most thriller/pop horror writers, there’s nothing that sets him apart from, or obviously superior to a dozen other creators of genre fiction of our time.
Jonas
/ August 10, 2010It your right to believe this about King, but I strongly believe that you’re wrong, and that aesthetic and intellectual complexity are contained in King’s writing, and served by his style. I say this as someone who appreciates literary depth, not as someone who thinks all writing should be superficial and easy.
(As I also believe that “genre” is a marketing construct, not a valid way of looking at literature.)
Pi
/ August 21, 2010I can’t believe I read most of this. But what I did get out of this was a realization that you both are over-analytical dunces. This is what academia has done to such fields as English, Philosophy, etc. Everyone tries to break apart the smallest/most insignificant point in a person’s argument, contradicts them, and then writes their argument off as being false. All you do is argue for arguments’ sake, a purely academic field, and then claim that your viewpoint is more right. From this act of dismissal of another’s view, you feel that you are entitled to a wider, more appreciative view of art and literature. Well, let me ask you this. How deep do you have to go to appreciate art? Why can’t art be purely a surface-level enjoyment? Why does a critic like Harold Bloom, and obviously this fascist Jonas, claim that they can appreciate art at a greater level then an average person? I do have to agree with Jonas on this one though, that Rowling and King have provided a much needed service to youngsters. Yeah, Rowling and King aren’t the best writers, but they’re some of the most accessible. Among many of the modernist giants like Joyce and Faulkner and the postmodernists like Pynchon, Foster Wallace, and Danielewski–these are not going to be read by a bunch of average middle-aged housewives. What you guys fail to bicker about is the intended audience of much of these writers and their success with solely that. Instead, you guys use a whole bunch of silly words and literary jargon to get across your point that I would never use in a literary argument (one that comes to mind is Jonas or someone wrote “syrupy language”) Come on what the fuck is that supposed to mean. Use some concrete language that we all can understand! And before I finish here, what I wanted to say was that you both epitomize the modern literary academic, a genuine hypocrite. Because Jonas, you say that you can appreciate Rowling and King for their artistic value despite them being popular authors, but then you go on to say that your appreciation for art is better than everyone else’s. I don’t get it here. What you guys are failing to miss is that overarching question of how valid is the Western literary canon, yes Bloom’s Norton Anthology, when it is the opinions of a few academics. Why do they get to say what gets accepted into the canon and what doesn’t. What happened to art for art’s sake. Honestly, you guys just fail to ask the right questions and go on answering each other, trading four’s, and never coming to a conclusion, this is a summary of modern analytical philosophy in academia. This is a preemptive strike: don’t go on to trash this because it is only an observation.
Jonas
/ August 21, 2010I don’t. That’s my bloody point. I only claim to appreciate art more than those who will simply dismiss writers for being popular, or who categorize art into high and low. You’re conflating my opinions with those of other posters. My mindset on this is anything but fascist: I simply argue for a greater diversity and openness in our understanding of what is beautiful. I don’t mean lowering our standards: I mean learning to recognize other paths to beauty.
Again, you’re confusing my point with that of other people. If you’d listened to what I was trying to say, you would never come up with the idea that I might have written that.
In the defense of the person who did write it – it’s wrong, but I do understand what they meant. It’s actually a pretty common term, and certainly not academic.
Please show me the quote where I say that. Because all I said is that I can appreciate art a whole lot better than the academics who try to strangle it. Not much of an assertion, really. Can I appreciate art better than some of the people posting here? Yes, but so can most normal, non-pretentious people – or they could, if critics didn’t try to tell them that they’re stupid for enjoying King or Rowling. That was the original point of the article. The only difference between me and a lot of people is that I understand why I enjoy King and Rowling – because they’re good – and don’t feel ashamed about it or try to construct this elaborate hierarchy of art.
Actually, that’s what I’ve been saying over and over and over. What do you think is my objection to Bloom? This is not a conversation about King or Rowling – who are merely examples, even though some of the commenters simply cannot get over their irrational hatred of them – but about the entire elitist mindset behind notions like the Western Canon, and about the role academics are playing in strangling (our understanding of) art.
Dayadhvam
/ April 11, 2011While I do sympathize with the people who are defending Shakespeare and the like (and I do enjoy reading from Harold Bloom), I do not begrudge the success of Stephen King and J. K. Rowling. Anyone who can create books that are as widely read as theirs are deserves a fair amount of respect. I think that they’re very good at gathering together their resources and utilizing their ideas. I think that the Dark Tower series has some interesting ideas and I find the Harry Potter world to be charming and magical. I don’t think the matter of originality should even be brought up simply because no artist or author can ever be truly original. It is very similar to what musicians would call the “folk process” – taking previous ideas and creating something “new” with it, or at least something the writer can call a piece of work. Oscar Wilde and T. S. Eliot put the matter simply:
Wilde: “Talent borrows and genius steals.”
Eliot: “Immature poets borrow; mature poets steal.”
As for the matter of the “depth” of literature, whilst I cannot really speak for Stephen King, I cannot pretend that Rowling’s books contain any profound insights that have superceded all that has come before it, nor anything of the majestic technical power of Joyce, Shakespeare, Milton, Tolstoy and the multitudes of great poets, playwrights and novelists. But insights do not have to be unexpected or profound, as Wittgenstein’s philosophy has proved. Indeed, the Harry Potter presents us with insights which are not gained through thorough introspection, but situations that the reader can easily connect to through everyday experience – which certainly shouldn’t be de-valued. I am not making excuses for her sometimes appalling use of grammar (although I also make a few slip-ups), and sometimes I feel that children will benefit more from being introduced to a richer vocabulary, but I presume her aim was to enchant the reader by plunging them into an escapist fantasy via a way of expressing herself that the reader will be familiar with (in other days, the “layman’s” language) rather than to inform the reader about the many nuances of the human condition. But of course, I’m sure the former can be done while inclining towards a more literary style.
If literature was simply about technique and scrutinous examination, then I certainly wouldn’t have been enraptured by Lewis, Jacques and Rowling when I was a child. But of course, there is a certain difficulty to writing children’s books and books intended to be popular. Riding the wave of popularity can be particularly dangerous, as its movements can be fickle and volatile – rather like children can be.
I have the suspicion that a few of us are missing the point with regards to writers such as King and Rowling. I think the sole reason that King and Rowling is for the sheer joy of it and to find a way of capturing the magic that possessed them in their own childhoods. I certainly get that impression from Stephen King, having read excerpts of his autobiography.
They do not knell the death of art. I do not read Rowling now, but I am indebted to her for contributing, along with Lewis, Tolkien, Carroll (ad nauseum) to my imagination by giving me theirs.
Anyone who says that art is dead are simply being defeatist and very lazy. If they feel that “true art” is being lost, then surely they should be doing more to stop its demise. There’s hardly a deluge of great, literary works pouring from the psuedo-intellectuals of the internet.
Jonathon Wisnoski
/ April 11, 2011So many really long comments.
didn’t read most of them but I will try to offer my wholly uninformed opinions.
On the subject of art as a dieing art.
I would say art seems as alive as ever to me, simply overshadowed by the huge about of (what I would call) non artistic but often more poplar media.
The one thing I do sort of agree with Bloom is with popular “art”. I have absolutely no respect for what the average Joe likes, it is probably a bad idea to ignore something simply because it is popular but I cannot say that I do not think less of something if it is.
I have never read king, but have read all of Rowling and would say she is very talented, and the best I have ever read, at creating easily enjoyable and readable books. Regardless of if she has deep hidden meanings in her books or not, their is a place for easy reads in literature and she deserves respect.
James
/ June 8, 2011Jonas, you know nothing about literature. Talking with you about literature is worthless.
Jonas
/ June 8, 2011James, thank you for your contribution. This comment proves your intelligence and deep understanding of literature.
Sam
/ July 2, 2011Interesting discussion. Disclaimer: I’m uneducated/GED/self-taught, so bear with me if what I’m about to say has been said millions of times before.
Some meditations:
Let’s demystify the CANON. The Canon is obviously a meaningless list. I think Bloom acknowledges this to a point, but it is reflective of some sort of truth in many of the works listed. The fact that we still read an epic anonymously written 1000 years ago (Beowulf) or that we read the ancients, and a number of them at that, flabbergasts me. It’s a beautiful thing really, that after wars, changing geography, sociological shifts, technological breakthroughs that alter the very fabric of our societies, we still have time to listen to what some writer had to say a few thousand years ago, and we can still feel the courage, the wonder, the insight, the life of it all. It still feels new.
Snobs and populists aside, most of us read either to be edified or entertained, but when a book smacks you upside the head and edifies you in a way that has little to do with “knowledge” per se, it’s a powerful feeling that most of us have trouble explaining, but leave that to the critics, or not. Whereas fashions on what’s entertaining and what’s important to know change with the aforementioned historical changes, it’s the powerful works that usually last. That’s why there’s a canon. But it’s meaningless because if the book listed doesn’t smack you upside the head with a wondrous new paradigm, if it doesn’t work for YOU, then it’s not in YOUR canon, if such a thing can be conceived. In fact, why not? In reality, that’s all it can ever be. High culture and low culture are ideological lenses. The authors of some of my favorite works, Ulysses and The Waste Land (although I don’t much like Eliot’s other poems), would laugh at the distinction. There’s a difference between having discriminating taste and fashioning your taste towards discriminatory attitudes. The first one shows thought, the second lack thereof.
Originality is real, but it has more to do with being original than being different. Some writers who are afraid of scrutinizing themselves and their world resort to faking originality, and while academic types are sometimes fooled, something in the primordial nature rejects this as a plea for attention and nothing more. Being original, means being the origin. It’s how the greatest writers write the most formidable material and make it all seem like child’s play because it IS natural. It comes naturally when the origin is one’s self.
And since when is there anything wrong with pop? Pop is the common language of our generation. After Warhol, things DID change, and, to the native of pop culture, it is a very developed field full of intertextuality and real meaning for real people. Pop music has its heroes, too. It has Dylan and Bowie and Rotten, even Lil Wayne. Sure, none of these have produced anything close to Shakespeare or Homer, but let’s remember how many years of oral tradition led to Homer’s breakthrough. Today our oral tradition is recorded and mass-produced. It is not inconceivable that one day masterpieces will arise from our pop culture. I used to think pop was doomed to the dustbin until I saw two large Rauschenberg pieces in a forced visit to a museum. That smacked me upside the head.
But remember. It’s all play. It’s not make-believe, as King said in the article you posted. I think play is something different, something more gratifying than fantasy for fantasy’s sake, not that King or Rowling are either. I’ve read only one King, Shawshank, which I’m told is not a representative piece, and I’ve read the first three Potter’s, which, where play is concerned, get the job done. Play is when reality becomes more real if not just because you’re inventing it. The harder you play, the more it wraps around your day to day life, your thoughts, your existence, the deeper it gets. Mr. Insight himself, Prince Hamlet, was he not just a player?
These are all seeds, some more for my own understanding than for any other purpose, but I’d be happy to start a discussion based on them. That’s all for now.
Tim Lowey
/ July 17, 2011Against the naysayers of tradition, Bloom is right on just about all counts (I cannot think of any account on which he may be wrong). Against such hatred we might remember Nietzsche:
“One does not hate as long as one has a low esteem of someone, but only when one esteems him as an equal or a superior.” Hence I cannot hate Rowling or King.
To Philip Roth I might also add that the Age of Barbarism has long since come up on us, and, as Kundera has, to my mind, rightly suggested, “The struggle of people against power, is the struggle of memory against forgetting.” We forget at our peril.
King and Rowling are writers of ‘penny dreadfuls’ and in their hands, the “kids” are not “alright” if by ‘alright’ we mean developed in any literary sense, such is the danger posed by the obsessive infantilising of ourselves with modern cultural habits, although as Bloom correctly states, the Canon itself cannot be harmed by these writers in any sense, since the Canon is self-determining and self-reflexive, hence, also, Rowling cannot be a part of it, no matter how many trivial attempts are made by would-be advocates of the Canon to claim her work as ‘Poetic’ in anything but a self-advantageous fashion, such as we see in The Times newspaper in England, hardly a standard for Canonicity. Once our academic pretenders for “social justice” finally remove their already cracking masks of faux-righteous discourse and lay down their unwieldy arms of Foucault and Derrida, Bloom, like Abrams, will stand as a shining beacon for the next generation of aestheticians who will pick up from whence they left off.
wisnoskij
/ July 17, 2011So you are saying that it is not true that a significant reason for story telling is to entertain?
What is important when telling a story then?
[The previous paragraph took it for granted that you agree that Rowling has entertained many people.]
IAmNobody
/ November 7, 2011I’m sorry to resurrect this old argument, but reading over the above debate (which is really quite fascinating and well-conducted; on your part, at least) I noticed that you argue that Rowling is, even on the sheer level of average prose, superior to novelists who include Philip Roth and Thomas Pynchon. As I’ve always found Rowling’s rather drab prose a weakness of her writing, could you at least provide passages of her prose which you find more accomplished and exceptional than the average work of, say, Thomas Pynchon, a writer whose style I have always found exceptional? I don’t intend to be rude, and perhaps you could even change my mind.
Jonas
/ November 8, 2011I don’t have the time to write a meaningful response today, but I should have one for you in a few days. More importantly, as soon as I’m done with my current projects I will take the time to write a more detailed post on the subject of Harold Bloom and literary aesthetics.
IAmNobody
/ November 9, 2011Thanks!
Jonas
/ November 13, 2011OK, here’s sort of an attempt to explain. It is going to be somewhat limited, but maybe enough to give a vague idea of my opinion until I can find the time for a detailed post.
I don’t actually disagree with Bloom’s focus on aesthetics. I do believe there is more to literature than aesthetics, but I do feel that the lack of respect or interest in literary beauty is part of the reason such a vast amount of utter crap is being published. However, where I must part ways with Bloom is when the notion of beauty becomes confined to the opinion of the elite few. This is an aesthetic point, not a political one: I see Bloom’s vision of what makes “true literature” as infuriatingly limited and… well, you see, at first I wrote conservative, but that’s not even it. It’s just limited to one sort of writing, the equivalent of an art critic saying “only Cubism is true art.”
I see no problem with people finding beauty in the kind of convoluted writing exemplified by someone like Pynchon; personally I find that this type of writing is too artificial, too constructed for my tastes. Like a television comedy so obsessed with its own punchlines that it forgets to have characters, I tend to feel that many modern novels forget or forgo storytelling (which is seen as a kind of dirty word) to present us with intricate but somewhat lifeless sentence constructions, which I don’t find to be aesthetically pleasing. This last part is essential, because many commenters immediately jumped to the conclusion that I’ve never read anything, I’m an illiterate lout who simply doesn’t want to be challenged, etc. I simply don’t think that verbosity and nested sentences equal beauty (or genuine complexity of any kind).
I also shouldn’t oversimplify this; I don’t want all writing to be simple and accessible. There are plenty of works that I enjoy that are quite complex on a verbal and structural level; but I believe that such complexity must be artistically justified, and in many modern novels it is either dogma or ego.
Now, specifically as to the work of J.K. Rowling, I cannot pick out a particular passage (partially because my wife is asleep and going through our overburdened shelves would be noisy). But that doesn’t really matter, because I don’t believe that good writing consists only (or at all) of writing impressive sentences. Comparing which writer can write the prettier sentence is not only childish, but pointless, because there are other aspects to writing which cannot be so easily compared, such as structure or flow. One of the many things I find so remarkable about Rowling’s writing is precisely how it flows – not the individual sentences, but what the sentences do together as a whole. Every time I read one of her books, I get an intense sense of pleasure, pleasure at the words and names and the mellifluous way they run through my mind while evoking all kinds of images and emotions.
This is tied up with content, though; you can’t just separate the way a story is told from what the story is about. The moments, the gentle irony often employed by the narrator, the characters, the places, the allusions, all of it is interconnected, and all of it together gives me both intellectual and aesthetic pleasure of the highest order.
The same could be said of one of the most remarkable moments I’ve ever seen in a book, which comes in the seventh and last Harry Potter book. I don’t want to accidentally spoil it, but I’m referring to the use of an expletive by an older character in a particularly tense situation. I find that scene remarkable because aesthetics and content work together perfectly: in the context of extremely tragic events, there is an upsurge of emotion in a character, and that emotion is expressed as clearly as it has ever been by anyone with language that is not only appropriate to the moment, but so completely unusual in the stylistic context of the book that it stands out in stark relief. It’s a harrowing moment executed with impressive skill, and done so using only a few words. Sometimes art really is doing less, not more.
That’s it from me for now. More when I find the time to go into this properly.