Apr 4, 2023·edited Apr 4, 2023Liked by Dr. Kathleen Waller
This is very interesting, Kathleen. I've read literary theory and criticism extensively. I've set aside more than half the schools (Freudian, Marxist, poststructuralist / deconstructionist) as of no value to my work, but I find value in several of them, including reader response, historicist and New Historicist, feminist, and postcolonial, and classical theory.
To an extent, writers are marginalized in America. But I think more people are reading than ever before, and more than that, writing more than ever before. But if you dont live in or near a big city like New York, Boston, Chiicago, San Francsico LA, or in a college town, you wont get access to the best boos especially from international writers since most socalled "critics" in the Us are abysmally uninformed about international literature ( ie Darwish and Sahar Khalifeh from Palestine,
Neruda and Lispector and Borges from Chile, Brazil, and Argentia) Yu Hua from China, Kim Hysoon from South Korea. Yet I have seen scores of African American teenagers reading Toni Morrison and Ton Cade Bambara on thee NY subways.Ive had students read in one night Richard Wright's riveting first writing UncleToms Children andd, some of them,readall of Wright'swork in one semester. True of Charles Johnson( The Dreamer, Soul Catchers, Dr. Kings Refrgerator and Other Stores, just as I have students real Isabel Allende's work and the poems of Martin Espada, recent 2023 poetry winner of the Natonal Book Award.
Go back to Virginia Woolf. Many people who study and love literature are so far up the..... of theory( and its always been this way my lifetime, from the Freudian Jungian maniacs of the fifties and sixties to the surging seameattritionits of the seventies and eighties. Many of these critics should be jailed for death by tedium. Same goes for the t eachers the collelgeprofesors applying their own ideolgicalgrids , enamoured of their own rigidiies. And what they often specialize in is amassig enough ordained secondary criticsm to bludgeon trheir students into SUBMISSION. Stay tune to my comments on how that one world has bastardize the process of literary magazines and the relationships of writers to magazines especially of fiction,poetry and essay writers to the many many myriads of print and online galaxies of magazines. Go back to Virginia Woolf who is STILL ahead of her time especially In To The Lighthouse and Jacpbs Room. Check out the writers of recen years who are revolutionizing the art of the short story- Hassan Blassim, Yu Hua, Vi Khi Nao, James Kellman, John Wideman, Assia Djebar,Etgar Keret, among others. Seek out the two groups Cave Canem and Kaya Press who have revolutionized US Poetry
Sometimes we make things too complicated in the humanities. For me it's fairly simple. We want our society and our literary and other cultural works to have the excellence -- and draw us toward excellence -- as described by the ancient Greek and Roman theorists, the Renaissance and Enlightenment theorists, and through 19th Century theorists like Matthew Arnold. And we want a society (and our literary and other cultural works) in which everyone is fully included and empowered -- as described by the best feminists and other gender theorists, race theorists, and postcolonial theorists.
Apologies to all my free subscribers for the initial lockout. Looks like I've now got it sorted for future posts...fingers crossed. :)
This is very interesting, Kathleen. I've read literary theory and criticism extensively. I've set aside more than half the schools (Freudian, Marxist, poststructuralist / deconstructionist) as of no value to my work, but I find value in several of them, including reader response, historicist and New Historicist, feminist, and postcolonial, and classical theory.
I must say dearie
I find theory rather dreary.
Much of it seems based on what writers face all day long, ranging from large to medium: longwinded tediium.
SPAWN OF MCLUHAN and later, Derrida
Most have the pretence of trying for clarity
But it seems there is a disparity
beyond the Pale
and I hope they never have to go to jail
where their biggest weakness may become immense
Since they have never met nor served a short sentence.
To an extent, writers are marginalized in America. But I think more people are reading than ever before, and more than that, writing more than ever before. But if you dont live in or near a big city like New York, Boston, Chiicago, San Francsico LA, or in a college town, you wont get access to the best boos especially from international writers since most socalled "critics" in the Us are abysmally uninformed about international literature ( ie Darwish and Sahar Khalifeh from Palestine,
Neruda and Lispector and Borges from Chile, Brazil, and Argentia) Yu Hua from China, Kim Hysoon from South Korea. Yet I have seen scores of African American teenagers reading Toni Morrison and Ton Cade Bambara on thee NY subways.Ive had students read in one night Richard Wright's riveting first writing UncleToms Children andd, some of them,readall of Wright'swork in one semester. True of Charles Johnson( The Dreamer, Soul Catchers, Dr. Kings Refrgerator and Other Stores, just as I have students real Isabel Allende's work and the poems of Martin Espada, recent 2023 poetry winner of the Natonal Book Award.
Go back to Virginia Woolf. Many people who study and love literature are so far up the..... of theory( and its always been this way my lifetime, from the Freudian Jungian maniacs of the fifties and sixties to the surging seameattritionits of the seventies and eighties. Many of these critics should be jailed for death by tedium. Same goes for the t eachers the collelgeprofesors applying their own ideolgicalgrids , enamoured of their own rigidiies. And what they often specialize in is amassig enough ordained secondary criticsm to bludgeon trheir students into SUBMISSION. Stay tune to my comments on how that one world has bastardize the process of literary magazines and the relationships of writers to magazines especially of fiction,poetry and essay writers to the many many myriads of print and online galaxies of magazines. Go back to Virginia Woolf who is STILL ahead of her time especially In To The Lighthouse and Jacpbs Room. Check out the writers of recen years who are revolutionizing the art of the short story- Hassan Blassim, Yu Hua, Vi Khi Nao, James Kellman, John Wideman, Assia Djebar,Etgar Keret, among others. Seek out the two groups Cave Canem and Kaya Press who have revolutionized US Poetry
Sometimes we make things too complicated in the humanities. For me it's fairly simple. We want our society and our literary and other cultural works to have the excellence -- and draw us toward excellence -- as described by the ancient Greek and Roman theorists, the Renaissance and Enlightenment theorists, and through 19th Century theorists like Matthew Arnold. And we want a society (and our literary and other cultural works) in which everyone is fully included and empowered -- as described by the best feminists and other gender theorists, race theorists, and postcolonial theorists.