I'd like to take the power that I have over your attention right now to point you towards a fabulous project my friends Si and Lyle have embarked upon: a blog of their simultaneous readings of BEING AND TIME, reputedly the hardest philosophy book ever written. (Although probably not the hardest book, period; which probably is still FINNEGAN'S WAKE. In a way, one suspects that we maybe have moved past the era of "impossible" books--Derrida's GLAS being the most recent one I can think of, with the exception of an undying obnoxious pop post-modernist tendency.)
The highest comment I can pay their blog is that I instantly want to copy it and wish I had thought of it first. Also, I wish I wasn't reading 3,000 other books right now instead, so that I could jump into the stream of BEING AND TIME. I am reading Kant's CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON right now, and I plan to finish the other two critiques, Hegel's PHENOMENOLOGY, and some Husserl before I make it to Heidegger (perhaps with a detour into Nietzsche). I have adopted this scheme, not in order to "structure" Philosophy into some chronological Greatest Hits, but so that I will actually finish the books I start, instead of picking up Schopenhauer here, Lyotard there, etc., and kind of drifting about (which would be fine if I had the time).
Other books I think could have a good reading-blog:
Walter Benjamin's ARCADES PROJECT
Karl Marx's CAPITAL
Jacques Derrida's GLAS (or THE POST CARD)
Deleuze/Guattari- CAPITALISM AND SCHIZOPHRENIA (2 vols)
Samuel Richardson's CLARISSA
Sterne's TRISTRAM SHANDY
Cervantes or Rabelais
Ezra Pound's CANTOS
Franz Kafka's short fiction
So maybe I will do one of those (or something else) one of these days. Who's with me?
17 comments:
This is Seth from WITBAWDTSL. I will blog Arcades or Capital with you; I'm starting one or the other this coming weekend. I don't have a blog, but I can email you stuff. table.of.elements@gmail.com
Whoa--CLARISSA???
How about Joseph Andrews...
I am reading the abridged Clarissa for class. Seriously, though, don't do it. Read Tristram Shandy. As far as wacky 18th century British novels go, Sterne is way better than Richardson's moralizing (you could read Shamela!) ALSO, Jenny Davidson IS teaching a class on Clarissa in its entirety next year. Just in case you change your mind.
PUH-LEEZ.
I've read both Tristram Shandy and Shamela. (and Pamela) (and Joseph Andrews).
Shamela, Pamela, Joseph Andrews--which is your favorite?
(Mine is J.A.)
I thought you said Cervantes sucks.
There is some hard-going in parts of Cervantes, that's for sure. It isn't quite, "I don't listen to Bill Haley and the Comets, either," but approaching that.
You got one almost right: Pound's CANTOS. Maybe some Marx for yux (the rest on the buchbrennen)
Ansteigen!
yawn...Pound over Marx, what a shocking sophisticate you are...
No sophisticate here; ah think that there are all sorts of decent arguments in favor of pinkslipping LitLand, or the great majority of it (certainly in public uni's), ASAP--or at least reducing to 1-2 courses (electives?) for Biff and Bunny in their senior year at Sappho State. And I suspect Bertrand Russell (if not Jefferson) would approve. But Pound's politics are interesting (no, that doesn't mean dittoing the blackshirts)
Well, without these stated "decent arguments," I am compelled to disagree. Or am I? I am not sure what the character of a public university is: to produce efficient workers? good citizens? good people? smart people? That would be the first debate, before we decided if literature met the criteria for inclusion.
I am not really concerned about public universities, though (in this debate), nor some triumphant pantheon of worthwhile political/inspirational literature. I would confine myself to saying that humanity is secure in my continued hope for it, almost solely by the expression of its better genius in art and literature. If we couldn't have "David Copperfield," I don't know that I should think we were worth much.
For one, literary narrative aren't, er, "true." William Shirer and many other historians--academic, popular, etc.--attempted to set down the historical truth of WWII. What does Pynchon do? He sort of touches on, or alludes to, historical facts, or suggests they are difficult to ascertain, creates scenes, describes the trajectory of a V2 for kicks, or other cartoony arabesques, makes references to modern physics, etc. But truth it is not. And the same might be said for Schackspeare, or Moby Dreck etc. Dickens may have had a good heart, but read a bit about London East End during the reign of Queen Vikky, and you might think he was dreaming.
So it's not historical, nor any confirmable or even probable claims offered--it might allude to important science (as Pynchon's texts or sci-fi or even WS Buroughs might)--but that isn't the raison d'etre, is it. Perhaps some Lit. offers interesting syntax (I think it is--like EA Poe--such a nice style) but belle-lettres don't pay the rent. C or Java or integrals or natural selection or a .45 pays the rent. And as Ahht, I think most lit. moves less than say a decent Chopin prelude.........And Platon hisself was opposed to poetics and representational ahht, but made some allowances for the JP Sousas of the day......Lit is generally a sort of intoxication---
Any ways, ignore me if u want, or delete. Es tut mir leid. Nonetheless, Lit is a type of hegemony as y'all say. And I think that is a traditional, and viable perspective, and one isn't a puritan or stalinist for suggesting it..............
Kind of naive, though, right?
Like, "they are just stories." Well, I sort of disagree, since there is more psychological truth in Proust, Shakespeare, Dickens, Achebe, George Eliot, Sophocles, et al, than other books. It is not "facts" but still a representation of reality.
Actually, though, this is too dumb. Imagine William Shirer WITHOUT his closet-dramas: isn't there something implicitly novelistic about his cast of characters? Can you imagine THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICH without WAR & PEACE? (WAR & PEACE, by the way, stakes a great claim at "truth." Read it, and get back to me. Same for George Eliot's MIDDLEMARCH.) As for Pynchon, whatever. Not a fan.
I offer instead a great quote by GB Shaw about Dickens:" All the political futility which has forced men of the calibre of Mussolini, Kemal, and Hitler to assume dictatorship might have been saved if people had only believed what Dickens told them in LITTLE DORRIT.”
But really this is a dumb argument since you are asking something of literature which it is not itself interested in providing.
Ive taken a crack at War and Peace, and thought after a few dozen pages, why? (I prefer Dostoyevsky anyways.) I read the history instead; similarly for the French Rev---yeah I struggled through Red and Black years ago--the actual history of the time is more interesting.
Same with most fiction. Heart of Darkness is fairly moving, but not nearly as horrifying as the historical record. Shakespeare is now nearly a religion, but Tudor history is much more complex and ugly. Not only that, Shakespearean plays are not true; and yet the fabrication of drama has replaced the history; and one sees that even with 20th century lit---kids know all about TS Eliot or Ulysses, and hardly anything about WWI and WWII, or the depression etc. Hamlet is not a person, tho' perhaps based on some ancient character. History is difficult enough.
HAMLET is wildly anachronistic. It is a medieval Danish setting, yet almost every cultural reference is to Shakespeare's time.
I feel your argument going in circles; I, personally, am EXTREMELY well-read in history of WW1 and WW2 (to use your example). Yours is essentially Plato's rejection of literature, the numerous rebuttals of which I cannot improve upon here further.
No, my contra-aesthetics stance is not merely a updating of that ancient chestnut from the Republic. I don't worship Bertrand Russell (who, however, may have had the Republic in mind in his early remarks against lit.--google it), but I think BR realized that literature often takes on a sort of religious, or pseudo-religious character. It's like a shadow dogma, or it works to enforce theology, or shall we say dogma of various sorts, whether xtian or marxist.
And since it is not referentially sound (the "message" or theme of Heart of Darkness cannot really be established, however sublime the theme may seem) and neither analytic or synthetic (tho' I grant some realist lit. might be somewhat synthetic or perhaps inductive, but hardly a case study), it can really only be read as syntax--that may sound reductionist, but my own sense is that even interesting, complex syntax (i.e Shakespeare) does more harm than good--that was Russell's view I think too; ok, what eloquence, but that eloquence has little to do with truth.
So Lit functions as a syntactic reinforcement of various assumed dogmas (tho I grant it might be useful in a sense--Shakespeare as sort of pedagogue for the British monarchy, or perhaps lesbian charm school). It's really quite meaningless, however, apres Hitler-Stalin pact.
Post a Comment