I once had a creative writing student who had real talent, I told him he should buckle down and write his stories all the way through. He told me that he felt he needed to read more post-structuralism before he could properly write the fiction he wanted to put out in the world. My colleagues laughed at the folly of youth in that student’s statement, but I was happy to see it for what it was: He was simply a budding Critic, capital C. His mind was prone to seeking patterns, structures, considerations of machinations... We are misled by our choice of language in what’s called “lit crit”, as it gets reified as something ancillary. It’s simply a qualitatively unique mode of thinking and expression, and every bit as generative as the creative works with which it corresponds. We don’t call the traditional male dancer in a Tango couple the “dancing critic”. They are very much in it together.
wow. you just, very succinctly, said something I've been struggling to state in some kind of intellectually meaningful way since sometime in the late sixties, when a book like Northrop Frye's magnificent "Anatomy of Criticism" could actually change my life (nowadays, most of the "literati" I find myself encountering have never heard of it, to their endless detriment).
yes, it is very much its own thing. reading Empson on, say, Milton is altogether different from reading Milton.
reading Kenneth Burke on ANYTHING relates only to Kenneth Burke. for yet another example closer to "home:" I'm not always down with the things Christopher Ricks says about Dylan when he includes Dylan in the "great line of English poetry," but the ENCOUNTER between Ricks and Dylan is a magnificent thing all by itself.
This helps me realize that I value attention to the specific words of the text as much as I do the "subject matter" discourse in criticism. I once claimed to value the words more, but that's silly aestheticizing. Yet reading this, even though I don't really care for Byron, the phrase "tenth transmitter of a foolish face" just leaps off the screen as a beautifully Augustan bit of concision. So give me Empson at his best over even these excellent critic-writers.
back in graduate school, c. 1975, a close friend of mine told me an entirely salacious story about encountering the Empsons during an MLA conference. it's a great story, but I can't tell it here.
"Argufying" (the huge book of fugitive Empson essays) has fallen apart in my hands. more than once.
Amen! Glad you said this for our talented young writer. Spot on. He has the natural gift for the comparative sifting that the best history writers make look effortless.
I once had a creative writing student who had real talent, I told him he should buckle down and write his stories all the way through. He told me that he felt he needed to read more post-structuralism before he could properly write the fiction he wanted to put out in the world. My colleagues laughed at the folly of youth in that student’s statement, but I was happy to see it for what it was: He was simply a budding Critic, capital C. His mind was prone to seeking patterns, structures, considerations of machinations... We are misled by our choice of language in what’s called “lit crit”, as it gets reified as something ancillary. It’s simply a qualitatively unique mode of thinking and expression, and every bit as generative as the creative works with which it corresponds. We don’t call the traditional male dancer in a Tango couple the “dancing critic”. They are very much in it together.
wow. you just, very succinctly, said something I've been struggling to state in some kind of intellectually meaningful way since sometime in the late sixties, when a book like Northrop Frye's magnificent "Anatomy of Criticism" could actually change my life (nowadays, most of the "literati" I find myself encountering have never heard of it, to their endless detriment).
yes, it is very much its own thing. reading Empson on, say, Milton is altogether different from reading Milton.
reading Kenneth Burke on ANYTHING relates only to Kenneth Burke. for yet another example closer to "home:" I'm not always down with the things Christopher Ricks says about Dylan when he includes Dylan in the "great line of English poetry," but the ENCOUNTER between Ricks and Dylan is a magnificent thing all by itself.
so thanks again, Bradley.
This helps me realize that I value attention to the specific words of the text as much as I do the "subject matter" discourse in criticism. I once claimed to value the words more, but that's silly aestheticizing. Yet reading this, even though I don't really care for Byron, the phrase "tenth transmitter of a foolish face" just leaps off the screen as a beautifully Augustan bit of concision. So give me Empson at his best over even these excellent critic-writers.
ha, serves me right, it's Savage, not Byron.
back in graduate school, c. 1975, a close friend of mine told me an entirely salacious story about encountering the Empsons during an MLA conference. it's a great story, but I can't tell it here.
"Argufying" (the huge book of fugitive Empson essays) has fallen apart in my hands. more than once.
Writing history might appeal to you.
Amen! Glad you said this for our talented young writer. Spot on. He has the natural gift for the comparative sifting that the best history writers make look effortless.
he does indeed.