literary critics

The Prisoners of Dwight MacDonald

A RANT

(photo of chateau d’if prison c/o travelfrance)

We’re imprisoned by our own attitudes.

We’re held back by the preconceptions, prejudices, and stereotypes with which we address the world. They become invisible jail bars around our minds. We construct a fortress around our accepted ideas– stone walls that an army couldn’t break through.

One sees this in every aspect of life– including in the literary realm. Writers and critics cling to rules laid down sixty-four years ago by a handful of intellectual pundits, most notably Dwight MacDonald in his 1960 Partisan Review essay, “Masscult and Midcult.”(An earlier essay by Clement Greenberg in the same publication, edited by Dwight MacDonald, set the tone.)

UNBREAKABLE RULES:

No Kitsch! Whatever kitsch is. Anything which might entertain the public.

Beware the Public! No masscult, midcult, on the edges or in-between.

Allowed: Completely inscrutable, alienating, pretentious and goofy examples of upper-class overeducated posturing known as the avant-garde.

Whither the fate of the prisoners of Dwight MacDonald?

They sit cautiously in their antiseptic modernist-designed offices and rooms. No art adorns the walls– only a single beige baize stripe (the walls themselves are gray) in the style of Barnett Newman, and a distorted portrait of a sparrow, meant to symbolize one of their captured-behind-glass idols, Proust.

The prisoners wait for: something. Not commutation of their sentences. They love their sentences– both kinds. They sit carefully at cold metal tables writing sentences on laptops, well-written one-direction sentences– always very well written, carefully screened: they rigidly police this– more and more sentences, always more of them, long ones, jammed impressively together in ever-longer paragraphs on more and more pages– Infinite Graphomania– and the sentences are acceptable if they’re intellectual, not passionate or emotional; not too much plot or excitement; no outbursts or melodrama– that would be kitsch– the sentences are permissible, approved, allowable, laudable just as long as they don’t engage the stray incautious reader in any way.

-Karl Wenclas

(These thoughts to appear someday in a planned book on the technocracy.)

“the critics” by Ken Kakareka

HEMINGWAY FESTIVAL 2024

(photo c/o National Book Critics Circle)

they say
that writers
don’t play,
that’s why
they make
such great
observers.
like the
impotent
jake barnes
in the sun
also rises.
well
let me
tell you
something.
writers play.
i’ve stuck
my beak
in depths of
squishy kiwi
and tasted
the sweet,
the sour,
the ripened
and
the bitter.
i’ve snorted,
drank,
and fucked
everything
west of
the sun
and
sat with
the lamest
of ducks
at dead
wine bars
listening to
drowning
conversations,
and i’ve
walked
the walk
at old joints
in new orleans
where what
barflies say
jumps off
the walls
like frogs
off lilies.
so i can
tell you
that writers
play more
than anyone.
don’t believe
the critics –
they’re
the ones
who don’t
play.

See also Ken Kakareka’s other feature in this year’s Hemingway Festival, “Old Bull.”

Are Arts Critics Pretentious?

photo of Dwight Macdonald c/o Bettmann-Corbis

THAT WAS THE QUESTION making the rounds on social media this past weekend as a video parody of snobby film critics circulated on Tik Tok and Twitter.

BUT: Is pretentiousness a fair criticism? Seeing that synonyms of “pretentious” include “affected” and “ostentatious,” I’d guess yes— based on quick looks at a couple essays by literary critics at New Left Review, of all places.

First is this one, by Hermione Hoby:

Here’s another fast glimpse of another essay from the same venue, this one by Leo Robson:

Clear-thinking criticism or pseudo-intellectual blather?

The reason I pulled the excerpts from New Left Review, is because at a “leftist” journal, certainly, is where you’d expect to find writing accessible to ordinary workers– to millions of curious readers from all areas of society eager to find writing they can agree, or disagree, with, and sometimes be moved by. Passion! Polemics! Opinions!! WHY NOT?

Instead they get exercises in intellectualism, from former university students who never left the classroom– or the classroom never left them. They’re still writing for professors or dissertation committees, or for other inside-the-box, don’t-make-waves thinkers just like them.

Pretentious? You bet!

-Karl Wenclas

What’s Wrong with American Literature Part III

WHAT HAPPENED?

(Those who most need to read this, won’t.)

LITERARY INTELLECTUALS became too caught up in their own intellects. They lost sight of what matters most: That authentic art is of, by, and for the people. IS a part of a society’s every day life. HAS meaning within that context.

The same phenomenon stagnated classical music. It became burdened by the art’s own intellectuals: music critics and academic pontificators who added to the form a heavy legacy of profound and-or pretentious thought, when all that mattered was the emotional connection between music and listener. Those notes or chords, or voices– those moments which went deep into a person’s soul and were beyond thought.

New fiction in this culture today especially should be playing chords deep within us, not merely impressing us with some Gaddis Foster-Wallace Knausgaard exhibition of disconnected intelligence.

Dickens and Dumas in the 19th century were wildly popular for reasons. Jack London’s tales have been translated into every language in every culture on the planet and loved by readers for over 100 years for reasons. Literature as an art form needs to get back to those reasons if it expects to be central to this society’s culture once again.

-KW