Literary Enlightenment

[bjarvis]

English literature, both the reading and the intelligent critique, is most often outside my grasp. I am not sufficiently well-read to make the grand connections between ideas, characters, symbols or narratives; I lack the training and particular intelligence required to insightfully deconstruct and appreciate the writer's text and meaning. Too much of the genre and accompanying industry is far from my own experience so I am as a novice, floundering, unable to reach the surface or even understand where the surface might be located.

Determined pig-ignorance, however, keeps me trying.


With this kind of reckless optimism, I read "Among the Reviewers: John Updike and the Book-Review Bugaboo" by Wyatt Mason in the December, 2007, issue of Harper's Magazine. And amazingly found myself touched and moved more than any other essay on literature I've read in this magazine or any other publication in decades.

Mason writes eloquently on the nature of reviewing and critiquing written works, discussing in particular Due Considerations by John Updike. He begins with a description of broad manifestos maintained by various schools of literary thought: who should be performing the critique, how mean-spirited or puerile one might be, the degree of fairness, rigor and respect for books in general the critic must bring to the task and the nature of the goal in reviewing and critiquing itself. It's a slugging introduction but it serves us well when he begins systematically examining Updike's long career and --to me, far more interesting-- methodology.

As he reviewed various works, Updike periodically penned his commentary into the margins: "graceless sentence," "good," "what a trick!" and more. Can you imagine, to be able to go on the literary journey not just with the author but also with an accomplished literary companion pointing to poignant details which I would otherwise overlook in my inexperience!

I would have difficulty doing this myself, however, even if I possessed the intellectual microscope to examine the text in question: I simply can't bring myself to mar a book in any fashion. They are sacred things to be treated with reverence: I can't bring myself to even fold a page corner to mark my place when must put the thing down for a brief time! To mark the pages with my own notes feels akin to using a marker on the Mona Lisa.

But let's set that aside for the moment. Where Mason truly snared my attention was his excerpt from Updike's Picked-up Pieces where he lists his rules for reviewing:

1. Try to understand what the author wishes to do, and do not blame him for not achieving what he did not attempt.
   
2. Give enough direct quotation --at least one extended passage-- of the book's prose so that the review's reader can form his own impression, can get his own taste.
   
3. Confirm your description of the book with quotation from the book, if only phrase-long, rather than proceeding by fuzzy precis.
   
4. Go easy on plot summary, and do not give away the ending...
   
5. If the book is judged deficient, cite a successful example along the same lines, from the author's oeuvre or elsewhere. Try to understand the failure. Sure it's his and not yours?

I only wish I had this good advice when I was struggling through my high school and university English and French classes. Too late by far.

Mason goes on to demonstrate Updike's use of his rules of review by citing a passage from Updike's 1961 review of JD Salinger's Franny and Zooey --which I confess I have never heard of previously-- in the New York Times Book Review, and then analyzes the analysis:

"Without coyness, Updike renders a stern judgment based on telling quotation. He builds toward his findings in plain sight, earning him an authority that is based on his presentation of a plausible case. […] The job in this case demanded that he point out flaws in the work of a fellow fiction writer and corroborate those points with evidence.

"Although some readers are uneasy, a priori, with negativity, Salinger's reputation has weathered Updike's high-profile critique for a simple reason: a text is not exhausted by a work of criticism, only informed by it. We leave Updike's review thinking not about negativity, nor about Updike, but thinking, as good criticism makes us, about a writer's choices. That we ultimately do or do not agree with Updike's assessment is of no importance. That the assessment is clear and well-founded allows us to engage a point of view with which we can also, if we are so disposed, argue privately."

And that, dear reader, is my ah-ha! moment which made clear in an instant all the years of reading reviews of, well, nearly everything. I'm a little saddened that this small enlightenment has only occurred nearly 35 years after learning to read, but I hope the lesson stays with me for the balance of my life.

Comments

[paigemom.livejournal.com]

I have often suspected that literary critiques and infinite English papers attribute themes, symbolism, and other literary devices to the story that the author in no way intended...or was even aware of, and that to attribute such things is nothing more than self-serving (for a grade or for a living) mental masturbation.

But that's just me.

[quirkstreet.livejournal.com]

Another way of looking at this issue? Works of literature have often struck real readers in very different ways. One person reads X and thinks it's about Y, another thinks it's about Z. How is it possible not to get *exactly* the same things out of the same words? What is it about language that it's so open to interpretation .... even when you're just talking about the sentences real people speak to each other? Let alone plot or characters or whatever.

It doesn't take professional masturbation to notice that people interpret things very differently. Whether the author "intended" them to or not.

Much of literary analysis is simply an attempt to figure out how and why people can read so differently.

[apparentparadox]

Very interesting!