Subject
THOUGHTs on Heflin, a little verse.
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On Aug 19, 2010, at 10:48 AM, Stan Kelly-Bootle wrote:
> One quote from the Times Obit is particularly relevant to Blogger
> James Heflin’s reckless shot-gun attack on literary academe.
> (Heflin overlooks the sheer FUN of critical feuding! Why else buy
> TLS, LRB, NYRB ... ? And do we detect Heflin as critic manqué? His
> own bland ventures into LitCrit (Pale Fire’s gorgeous prose; utter
> brilliance ...) call for some creative expansion before grabbing
> peer-reviewed interest or gaining tenure?!
But that masterful prose artist is, like James Joyce, always in danger
of being devoured by critics. By which I mean people who give their
lives meaning by deconstructing works of art that don't need their
help, academic sorts who get so caught up in out-clevering and out-
egoing each other that they obscure brilliant, vibrant literature in
layer upon layer of self-important nattering, making it seem less and
less accessible to the unwashed.
James Heflin
While I think Mr. Heflin overstates his case, his sentences are not so
weak, and their overall sense worth heeding. Writers like Joyce &
Nabokov, even Shakespeare, have deliberately written puzzles into
their works. Why should it be innately bad for the reader/critic to
speculate and offer solutions to such puzzles?
On the other hand the boundaries, purposes, methods and practices of
criticism and analysis have historically been deplored for one reason
or another. Pale Fire itself is mainly a satire about criticism,
analysis, and projected semantics.
Anyhow I've taken the liberty to cast his words into iambic pen:
And so that master artist always is
In danger of his work being devoured
by critics striving to inflate their lives
by deconstructing works of art that don't
really need their help; academic
types, who lose themselves, out-clevering,
out-egoing each other; so much so,
that they defile a vibrant literature
with layer upon layer of fatuous prat
that thus obscures far more than it explains.
(This kind of exercise is intended to demonstrate to the reader
whatever the heightening effect of simple versification, the mere
regularization of accent, is, for better or for worse.)
Frank Kermode too found it necessary to criticize the critics:
From NYT Obit, August 18, 2010:
“What I do is despised by some younger critics, who want everything to
sound extremely technical. I spent a long time developing an
intelligible style. But these critics despise people who don’t use
unintelligible jargon.”
...he clearly had little patience for critics who seemed to write only
for other critics. As he wrote in “Pieces of My Mind: Essays and
Criticism 1958-2002” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003), criticism “can
be quite humbly and sometimes even quite magnificently useful.” But it
must also “give pleasure,” he added, “like the other arts.”
–GSL
ps.
Congratulation to great grandpa Stan!
and fur Elise, for making her great grand-
father so proud. And hardy applause for
Alexey's verse-translation. I enjoyed it all!
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