a hopeful sign re: academic criticism
Moreover, the seemingly automatic assumption that “sophisticated” works such as Rushdie’s somehow pack a potent (if nebulous) political punch is closely related to the assumption, by now thoroughly ingrained in the discourse of Western literary studies, that complexity is by definition a good thing, a clear sign (and for that matter, a prerequisite) of “genuine” art and thorough thought.
…. But there is a certain value in clarity…
- M. Keith Booker, “Midnight’s Children, History, and Complexity: Reading Rushdie after the Cold War,” Critical Essays on Salman Rushdie, ed. M. Keith Booker (New York: G.K. Hall & Co.), 284. I’m not (yet, anyway) sympathetic with Booker’s Marxist commitments, but I was delighted to read this earlier tonight.
I recently finished “Midnight’s Children”, and I could not agree more.
BTW, I misrepresented myself on the previous comment–I entirely agree with the New Critical stance on the approach to art. When I said the object “is what it is”, I meant only that you could not force the work of art to mean only what the author intended it to; that the object stands fixed for us to approach from any standpoint, as in the case of Donne’s (or Brooks’) urn.
Evan Chastain
April 20, 2009 at 7:52 pm
Evan,
Where are you studying? Do any of your professors agree with you re: New Criticism? I haven’t met anyone in the field in the last three years that endorses New Crit. wholeheartedly. Of course “close reading” is highly praised, but it’s always described as a technique that must be properly contextualized in some way.
I’d like to hear more about what you think of _MC_: I’m writing about it now for a postcolonialism class. I found parts of it to be incredibly powerful: knock-you-off-your-mental-feet kind of reading. Other parts, not so much: some places were overwritten/repetitive. Yet I put all of Rushdie’s subsequent novels on my Amazon wish list.
I’m primarily studying 17c England’s religious lit, by the way, so this is quite a departure for me.
Seth
April 20, 2009 at 8:20 pm
I am not studying actually. I began at UM but ended up getting a lucrative job offer as a full-time swim coach in Chicago, so I am looking into going to Loyola or UIC in the fall. At UM, the faculty was varied, a few Marxists, some post-modern populists, and a couple of anal-retentive dinosaurs. If anyone brought up New Criticism or styles used by the New Criticism, it was, as you say, to reach some other contextualized end.
I haven’t really thought too much about “Midnight’s Children”, as a “fun book” because I thought I might want to read some post-colonial Lit and I was enthralled by Magical Realism. I think it is hard to approach a book often set in the genre of post-colonialism with the sense of something outside of “real” cultural context or as speaking to something other than the “heart of a people”. If I were a Marxist I would find it easy to search for examples of Utopian ideals and gender discord. I was struck by the depth that he extracted from a seemingly simple image of duality. I’d have thought a modern writer would disband the concept of limiting reality to being “two-sided”.
Good luck in your paper, I’d like to hear more about it as you continue. What is your thesis?
And a hearty congratulations!
Evan
April 24, 2009 at 8:52 am
My thesis is more a question than an argument – it’s concerned precisely with the problem you’ve identified re: the difficulty of achieving an apolitical (or at least less political) reading of an text that is in a certain sense very political. Will let you know more when I know more.
Strangely enough, Marxism has a certain appeal to me these days. Not quite sure what to say, beyond that.
Seth
April 24, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I felt the same way (re: Marxism), after writing a paper on semblances of reification in Timon of Athens and ended up reading Jameson, Lukacs, and most recently have been reading Adorno and Benjamin. Mostly sticking to the Frankfurt school, but I find it quite intriguing on a theoretical level, I just don’t really like the practical ramifications. Adorno’s aesthetic theory, from what I’ve read so far, is interesting.
Evan Chastain
April 26, 2009 at 6:03 pm
“‘Midnight’s Children’, as a ‘fun book’”
*I read it as a fun book…
Evan
April 24, 2009 at 8:54 am