literary criticism

Mythmakers and Lawbreakers: Anarchist Writers on Fiction

admin — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

When the term “anarchy” is heard, most people think of the “circle-A” graffiti on crumbling buildings and the T-shirts of punk rock kids, or else imagine a state of complete lawlessness and the breakdown of society. Popular culture does nothing to dispel these collective thoughts. In theory and philosophy, anarchy refers to the absence of a state or rulers and a society in which there is no vertical hierarchy of class, but instead a horizontal equality of societal participants. Margaret Killjoy, the editor of Steampunk Magazine and an avowed anarchist, collected fourteen interviews with varying writers in the compact book Mythmakers and Lawbreakers; the common thread between the featured writers is that each is a professed anarchist, writes positively about anarchist societies, or maintains anarchist sympathies.

Reading each of the interviews, I quickly learned that there are as many varying definitions of anarchy as there are practitioners and theorizers. There is a vague commonality of a desire to see an end to free-market capitalism and democracy (the writers interviewed are mostly American and British) and the desire for complete equality and a gift- or barter-based economy, but otherwise each author has his or her own personal philosophy as it ties in to the theory of anarchy. This is not a criticism, and it does not seem as if anarchists are so loosely connected as to not have any sense of community at all. Rather, it appears as if there are just factions within the anarchist community, perhaps comparable to American democracy's political parties. Each interview in its turn is wholly fascinating to read, as the subjects are certainly outside of the mainstream, literature-wise. The most recognizable names are feminist sci-fi author Ursula K. LeGuin, graphic novel writer Alan Moore, fantasy writer Michael Moorcock, and eco-feminist/neo-pagan author Starhawk.

Margaret Killjoy (who, despite his traditionally feminine moniker, is male) is mostly interested in learning from his interview subjects how they define the intersection of anarchy and fiction, or how anarchist sympathies have defined their writing. This may be considered the theme of the book, although each writer tends to wax tangential about choice pet subjects rather than directly answering the question asked. Killjoy is an obvious fan of each featured writer and brings his own knowledge of anarchy and literature to the fore in his prepared and improvised questions.

One common thread throughout the varying writers' remarks is anarchy and its benefit to feminism. Anarchy would necessitate a breakdown of the patriarchy and optimally result in full equality of citizens. This is a beautiful idea, but I'm perhaps too cynical to accept that this could be the case; I tend to believe that peoples' inherent prejudices would still rule the day, resulting in unequal divisions of labor and other gender discrimination. This and other queries and criticisms occurred to me while learning more about the varying schools of thought in anarchist philosophy. Its practitioners, at least within Killjoy's book, are very idealistic and enthusiastic about their ideas, but also seem to think that these ideas could easily be instituted as the prevailing societal norm. This to me seems hopelessly naive. However, the book itself, the interviewees, and Margaret Killjoy are all refreshingly intelligent and passionate about their work and politics.

Written by: Natalie Ballard, January 23rd 2010

Activist Sentiments: Reading Black Women in the Nineteenth Century

admin — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 01:00:00 +0000

By P. Gabrielle Foreman

University of Illinois Press

In Activist Sentiments, P. Gabrielle Foreman examines reading practices and literacies—formal and social/vernacular—among African American women from 1859 to the 1890s. Foreman is concerned with literary production, reception, and consumption, and the ways that these practices offered opportunities for protest and resistance that have been overlooked.

The subjects of Activist Sentiments are Harriet Jacobs (Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl), Harriet E. Wilson (Our Nig: or, Sketches from the Life of a Free Black), Frances E.W. Harper (Iola Leroy), Victoria Earle Matthews, and Amelia E. Johnson. These women published works in the genre of domestic novels, a genre that scholars often have described as overly sentimental. However, these writers were also activists, journalists, and reformers. Foreman points out that “broader historical movements are embedded in the writings.” She uses the term “histotextual” to describe the recasting of historical events and debates in seemingly sentimental novels.

Earlier scholarship has described these authors as concerned primarily with appealing to white women reformers for sympathy, for example in the cause of abolition. Foreman points out that this analysis is very limited. The relationship between white and black women in the reforma movements of the mid-to late nineteenth century (abolition, temperance, suffrage) was extremely complex. Ivy Schweitzer, professor of women’s studies, has highlighted the fact that in the 19th century black and white women “were subject to different, in fact antithetical, but mutually constituting cultural imagery.” For example, while African American women could appeal to white women on the basis of womanhood and motherhood, for support in efforts to eliminate slavery the power differential between the races remained.

Identities are constructed in relationship; a “good and charitable” woman needs someone toward whom to be charitable. White women reformers, while allies on one level, might have viewed black women as victimized and in need of help. As we build coalitions in the twenty-first century, this a danger which still should cause wariness.

Similarly, tropes of domesticity and idealized motherhood take on a new tone when one realizes that they are written in light of slavery and ongoing racism. These themes are not merely used in imitation of white women’s novels, but express a longing for the option of domestic bliss for all African Americans, while also reaching out to white women on familiar literary territory. Embedded in the novels Foreman finds critiques of the dominant white society, so that while having an outward form of normative respectability, the novel can be a site of resistance.

Hazel Carby and other scholars have written about the impact that the cult of the virtuous white mother would have on perceptions of black womanhood—stereotypes of white purity contrasted with black sexuality. However, Foreman helps us to see that the African American writers in her discussion do not allow those stereotypes to rest easily.

The women in Foreman’s book were activists whose interests in political reform shine through their novels. Some of their fiction had been dismissed as “merely” contributions to the genre of domestic and sentimental novels. However, as Foreman makes evident, the texts contain many examples of protest, as well as race and class consciousness. By looking at these nineteenth century works, readers will be reminded that multiple levels of interpretation always exist simultaneously. We would do well to choose an interpretation that empowers the authors, that empowers the voices of women who have too often gone overlooked.

Written by: Lisa Rand, January 7th 2010

Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas: Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature

admin — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:00:00 +0000

By Anna Marie Sandoval

University of Texas Press

Anna Marie Sandoval has written a very personal book: Toward a Latina Feminism of the Americas: Repression and Resistance in Chicana and Mexicana Literature. Can a book about such a scholarly topic be personal? In the preface and afterword (eighteen pages), Sandoval explains how. To summarize would be to remove the reader’s pleasure for those who will venture into her story. Suffice to say that Sandoval has taken a chance: the academic is so rarely personal that she might be faulted for including these sections. However, Sandoval’s own “Chicana” story of repression and resistance comes to frame the analysis that she presents in her books of the works of authors: Sandra Cisneros (Chapter 2), Carmen Boullosa, Laura Esquivel (both Chapter 3) and Helena María Viramontes (Chapter 4). Just as real life often intersects with literature, as Sandoval demonstrates in her analysis, literature intersects with real life.

Chapter one introduces some of the critical theoretical elements necessary to framing the study of the Mexicana and Chicana genres. Sandoval provides a very thorough review of existing literature and includes subsections on context and mythologies. While all parts are quite detailed, some of the shared (social, political, and literary) history of the Mexicanas and Chicanas appear superficially covered, possibly an editing decision linked to the vulgarisation process.

The sections on Boullosa, Cisneros, and Viramontes are very well executed, especially in her very perceptive textual analysis. It is difficult to make innovative points regarding Como agua para chocolate, perhaps the most over-analysed Mexicana novel. Chapter three did hold some promise when Sandoval mentioned the importance of the Chicana grandniece’s gaze, but she failed to produce an assessment of it, something that would have helped bridge the Mexicana-Chicana divide, a concept central de Sandoval’s analysis. Furthermore, in her brief analysis of the novel (the shortest of all the authors examined), she did not reflect on the ambiguity of Mama Elena’s symbolic upholding of patriarchal ideals (since she did have an affair and child), a position which is essential to any analysis of repression and resistance in the feminist context.

In her chapter four discussion of Chicana writers and mainstream presses, Sandoval does not support her argumentation surrounding the “marketability” of Chicana writers with figures. Regrettably, she does not make the explicit link between marketability and what she deems “continuing overt racism and sexism.” Her provocative stance denouncing mainstream presses’ publishing decisions is undermined by her own lack of supporting evidence as well as by the fact that her analysis centers on authors published by mainstream presses. She warns against an ‘exoticization’ of these texts as representative of all experience of Latino and Chicano, paradoxically something to which she seems to contribute.

Overall, the book is very well written and can be read very easily. There were a few occasions when I questioned Sandoval’s expression, perhaps where she endeavoured to be too exhaustive in her writing. For example, exactly what is “U.S. third world women’s feminist discourse”? In the same vein, I was puzzled about how, by its very nature, Chicana literature could be neither “gender- or ethnicity-specific” and what exactly “women-centered spaces in Chicana literature” would be like?

Regardless of these minor questions, this book makes a significant contribution to the developing field of transnational analysis. The Chicana act of resistance hinges on the act of writing the story, as apparent in Viramontes’ heartbreaking story of a Guatemalan immigrant’s murder (Chapter 4). Consequently, both Sandoval’s personal story and literary analysis are very much a part of this progression “toward a Latina feminism.”

Written by: Sophie M. Lavoie, July 3rd 2009

Feeling Backward: Loss and the Politics of Queer History

admin — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 17:32:00 +0000

By Heather Love

Harvard University Press

Feeling Backward is a brilliant book that attempts the “impossible” and succeeds. Using Michel Foucault and Eve Sedgwick as theoretical touchstones, and incorporating Raymond Williams’s “structures of feeling,” Heather Love “feels backward” to reimagine and connect with aspects of a queer past that had been rendered invisible. In doing so—in risking (as she puts it) the fate of Lot’s wife in turning back to revisit a painful past—she embraces the ruins, the “fugitive dead,” the loneliness and failures and all the “negative affect” that need to be reclaimed as part of that history.

She invokes José Esteban Muñoz’s idea of a “gay shame day parade” to help insist, in her reconception of queer history, on those aspects of queer experience otherwise rendered too painful, too unhelpful, too outside the margins of “modern gay identity.” All of the literary figures she chooses to exemplify her project are liminal, largely rejected as part of gay historiography as it has been constructed since the early 1990s. And yet it is figures as diverse and complex as Walter Pater, Willa Cather, and Radclyffe Hall that provide Love with opportunities for “emotional rescue.” She dismisses the ancient admonitions against personal involvement with historical subjects and seeks passionately the play of recognition she feels in the struggles of these figures and their often subtle and disguised “queer performativity,” to use Sedgwick’s term.

Cather is one of those authors who, like Love herself, reaches into the past for a sense of community and identity and yet who does so with great ambivalence and a complicated pathos concerning her own gender and sexual identity. It is precisely that ambivalence—and the loneliness and melancholia it stirs—that need to be understood and confronted.

Another object for reclamation in the backward march is romantic friendship or, more generally, the examination of a mode of intimacy that has remained relatively free of stigma and yet contains much of the erotic and social connection between same-sex people that also needs to be included in queer historiography. And yet the indeterminacy of the term and its historical ambiguity renders it a kind of shadowy and poorly understood phenomenon in literature and history.

Queer theory has challenged the categories of sexual identity, even the notion of identity itself. As Love reminds us, so many have felt left out of the categories which were designed, in part, to help forge the sorts of connection and recognition, current and historical, that Love sees as desirable in our backward reach. The troubled, the alienated, the stigmatized, the personal catastrophes are a necessary part of queer history, as traumatizing as that history can be. Love moves bravely backwards to that murky time, the “queer life before Stonewall,” and then crosses the modernist line backwards to feel what has been lost. In doing so she has made a profoundly imaginative and powerful contribution to queer history, and yet her book remains reasonably accessible to those with some background in queer theory and literature.

Written by: Rick Taylor, July 1st 2009

Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities

admin — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 17:12:00 +0000

By Julie Abraham

University Of Minnesota Press

Julie Abraham’s Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities is a survey of the presence of homosexuality within urban contexts throughout modern Western history. Following a concise preface synthesizing the extraordinarily broad and encompassing history of the relation shared by homosexual communities and cities, she fittingly opens with a chapter tracing the lesbian body throughout urban and literary history, exploring Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs Du Mal and Balzac’s The Girl with the Golden Eyes. The author acknowledges her challenge to recent assumptions regarding “the union of homosexuals and cities, namely, that the homosexuality of the city is always male,” and emphasizes an often overlooked facet of urban studies. Her treatment of the legibility of the lesbian and her privileging of this body is an important and refreshing contribution to LGBTQ studies.

Abraham is a Professor of literature and of LGBT Studies and Metropolitan Lovers evidences a marked emphasis on the relevance of literary perspectives to sociological interpretations of the city. She notes that it is in fact literature that has taught us how to “read” urban homosexuality and alludes to literary/philosophical figures such as Susan Sontag to enhance her portrayal of the theatricality of urban social life. A generous number of photographs and illustrations offer a satisfying visual element that becomes crucial to understanding the complexities of gaze and spectacle in the formulation of the modern city. Events such as Stonewall are not left unexamined in Abraham’s study as she attempts to portray as comprehensive history of the Western urban landscape through the lens of LGBTQ theory.

The tone of Metropolitan Lovers is a bit less erudite than it would appear to be based on Abraham’s scholarly career and university publisher. Her writing is lucid, accessible, perhaps more to the casual reader interested in a general introduction to an LGBTQ study of Western cities than for an academic researcher. This is not to say, however, that Abraham does not offer an insightful survey highlighting the relevance of homosexuality to the construction of the modern city. The work also provides an implicit introduction to the exercise of “queering” texts previously understood in heterocentric terms and will most certainly contribute to and stimulate future scholarship and interrogations of what it means to be urban and queer.

Written by: Melissa McCarron, June 30th 2009

The Non-Believer’s Bible

admin — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:15:00 +0000

By Franklin St. John

Inkwater Press

The Non-Believers Bible was passed along to me for review by a colleague who found the writing style to be painful, thereby foreclosing the possibility of her writing a deliberate review. Rather than headache-inducing, I found the text to be perplexing. Both while in the midst of reading it and after finishing it, one question continuously echoed in my mind: How to read this text? The question posed is both one of style and of method, since the method makes or is materialized in the style just as the style manifests in the method.

Perhaps, then, it is more appropriate to say that a growing sense of perplexing grew within my mind as a result of the motley combination of methods (which varied according to the “facts, research, history and common-sense view” culled by St. John) and styles at work in the text. The primary method and style is critique. The five purposes outlined in the preface articulate the overarching aim of the text: a critique of prominent world religions, a critique of the effects of religious beliefs, and a concluding section that describes the ethics of a non-believer.

It is the mode of critique—both as style and as method—that proves indigestible, as if the text were so chewy that it renders it impossible to swallow with understanding. Critique is art—to be able to write a critique, then, is an acquired artistic skill. It seems that St. John recognizes the mode of critique as the art form par excellence of writing. The text’s generic blending is reciprocated by the stylistic blending—the effects, however, for this reader, are confusing. The text, in its blatant, rhetorical, mockery of religion, sometimes reads as thoughtful provocation, while at other times reads as solipsistic and uncritical.

Particularly problematic is the author’s egregious oversight in claiming “facticity” for his project while simultaneously criticizing various world religions for asserting the same claim. “The book is factual, non-fiction, and absolutely true.” On the other hand, religious texts “are not based on fact, only hearsay,” he emphasizes, “I cannot stress enough the concept that religions are based totally on hearsay, no facts, nothing measurable.” Herein lies the problem: What is fact? St. John reiterates that his book is factual, but the assertion that his text is completely factual is predicated upon the melding of these following “facts”: as he says, “concepts [that] come from my own head. I have about twenty years of formal education, public school, college, and postgraduate work in Biology and Education. I am over sixty years old. I am a husband, a father, a grandfather, and a cousin. I read a lot and I think a lot.”

What is “fact,” St. John? Not only is the author hypocritical, more important, he fails to distinguish how his facts are different—or, more “true”—than religion’s facts. The concept of “the fact” is a nebulous one; for those of us with “formal education,” and, in particular, training in philosophy and critical thinking, we know that the concept of the fact is predicated upon the institution in power that determines what is fact; we know that quantitative systems of measurement are arbitrary and artificial, such that measured facts exist within determinate, closed, systems; and we know that all thought and language inherently emerges from perspective, from individual or collective perspective(s), such that any claim of objectivity is fundamentally rendered moot.

St. John’s text is inspiring for its discussion of how one can make meaning of life outside of religion, but, otherwise, the text is undermined by its own logic and therefore lacks the necessary rigor and critical acumen to present an effective critique of religion in general.

Written by: Marcie Bianco, June 24th 2009

Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels

admin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:27:00 +0000

By Sarah Wendell, Candy Tan

Simon & Schuster

Romance is a huge market, the most popular kind of fiction—and one of the most maligned. In the introductory chapter of Beyond Heaving Bosoms, the authors quip, “Let’s face it: romance novels, with their titty-licious covers, overwrought cover copy, and genre constraints are an easier piñata to smack around than most.” Despite the genre’s flaws, the authors started their blog, Smart Bitches, Trashy Books, because they love romance novels and didn’t think it was receiving the in-depth scrutiny it deserved as fiction’s greatest money-maker. They ask, “Are romance novels really candy-coated porn or vehicles by which we understand our sexual and gender politics?” The short answer is: quite possibly, both.

Whether you love romance, or love to mock it—or, like the authors, both—there’s plenty to enjoy in Beyond Heaving Bosoms. Instead of numbered chapters, the book is divided into sections such as “Chapter Cleavage,” “Chapter Codpiece,” and “Chapter Secret Cowboy Baby.” There’s plenty of lovingly-written satire in the Smart Bitches Dictionary, the “Mad Libs” section, and a lengthy “interactive” romance parody in the style of the once-popular “Choose Your Own Adventure” novels. There are e-mails between members of the International Consortium of Heroes, a hypothetical hero and heroine pleading their case before Judge Judy, the Ten Commandments of Heroine Conduct, and an entire chapter devoted to the mockery of ridiculous cover art.

In addition to all the fun and games, there is insightful literary criticism. The book manages to be educational and subtly persuasive, as well as hilarious. The authors identify protagonist and villain archetypes, investigate the tying together of virginity and purity, re-imagine the romance novel as a coming-of-age narrative, and meditate on the cultural implications of “the heroine’s irresistible Magic Hoo Hoo and the hero’s untamable Wang of Mighty Lovin’.”

It’s hard to deny that by and large, romance novels are problematic for feminists. There are certainly feminists who love romance, but some common genre conventions are hopelessly misogynist. Rape is common in what the authors label “Old Skool Romance,” and within the confines of a book’s story, it is often seen as an acceptable means of “seduction.” But, they note that the genre has gone through a lot of changes in the last few decades, and as societal attitudes about rape have changed, its treatment in literature has also evolved. Perhaps paradoxically, there is no other genre that celebrates female sexuality and pleasure so enthusiastically. Romance is a genre written by women and read by women, and it is a wide umbrella with room for feminism underneath.

Written by: Kellie Powell, June 9th 2009

Ultra-Talk: Johnny Cash, The Mafia, Shakespeare, Drum Music, St. Teresa of Avila, and 17 Other Colossal Topics of Conversation

admin — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 13:43:00 +0000

By David Kirby

University of Georgia Press

In the introduction to Ultra-Talk, David Kirby writes, “What I offer in these pages is a way to read, see, and savor, a post-theoretical world view that everybody can share.” That is a strong assertion, and though this collection of essays covers diverse and interesting ground, Kirby doesn’t quite live up to his goal.

Elsewhere in the introduction, the author defines a set of criteria for what is “good”: that which “must not only appeal to both the elite and the public…it must also have a track record.” This criteria, presumably, sets the stage for the subject matter he will present in this “book of king-sized cultural monuments.” It is true that the variety of subjects does not disappoint; from Walt Whitman to Saint Teresa of Avila to Nascar to the reality show Big Brother, Kirby delights with his surprising turns and associative logic. Despite his efforts to speak across racial and class boundaries, however, Kirby succeeds in speaking directly, and only, to white, middle-class, academically-inclined readers.

Most of these compositions are a compelling blend of personal essay and literary or cultural criticism; they manage to both entertain and inform, which is a difficult task. Each essay reaches farther than the typical personal essay—start with a hook-y personal anecdote, then move outward toward some larger truth about life or human nature—and attempts not only to contemplate big questions, but also to educate readers in the process. I found Kirby’s explorations of Dante, Whitman, Shakespeare and Dickinson fascinating. But then again, I read those authors extensively during my academic career. Aside from the sporadic, required high school poetry lessons that many teenagers sleep through, most Americans, arguably, have not. By assuming that his reader is well-versed in classic literature, Kirby excludes much of his potential audience.

My point is that Kirby perhaps shoots himself in the foot with the grandiose definition his book presents in the introduction. It’s not that this collection of essays is bad. I, as a white, middle-class, academically-inclined person, very much enjoyed Kirby’s whimsical yet didactic tone and unique perspective on popular culture. The essay “Why Does It Always Have to Be a Boy Baby” was particularly well-crafted in its refusal both to endorse and to criticize religion, opting instead to examine the intrinsic role religion plays in every person’s life, whether or not s/he is a willing participant.

Kirby, a poet and literature professor, is skilled at making intellectual subject matter interesting and accessible. I simply wonder: is his “post-theoretical world view” really one “that everybody can share?”

Written by: Sarah Hudgens, July 5th 2007

Anxious Pleasures: A Novel After Kafka

admin — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 13:42:00 +0000

By Lance Olsen

Shoemaker & Hoard

This novel re-imagines The Metamorphosis, Franz Kafka’s story of Gregor Samsa who wakes up one morning as a bug. Samsa’s point of view is crucial to The Metamorphosis, but Lance Olsen focuses on those who witness the inexplicable, unsettling transformation: his sister, his parents, the chief clerk, the servant girl, the cook, the charwoman, and three lodgers. Anxious Pleasures expands the story to these peripheral characters and ones who never even met the new Samsa: a cashier who he casually dated, his sister’s suitor, and the neighbor downstairs. Olsen also introduces other dimensions with the voice of Margaret, a young shoe store clerk in contemporary England who is reading The Metamorphosis for a book club; Margaret’s grandparents, Neddie and Nellie, who are missing in the English countryside; and literary criticism of Kafka’s work.

Anxious Pleasures depicts Samsa as a humanoid insect: “a dim bluish-white wedge bobbing in the blackness...and the human head... peeking... around the shut wing.” The insect imagery is placed in the world outside of Samsa– the apartment is “divided into regular segments like... a brown bug’s belly,” sister Grete resembles a cricket, the three lodgers “move...like...part of the same spider in shabby black.” Samsa retains his humanity– those around him become questionable. Yet Olsen’s hybrid imagery demonstrates that no one is completely “other.” Samsa’s family becomes Samsa– his transformation is their own.

Metaphorical, descriptive language is what lends the most power to Anxious Pleasures. There is a reference to the hidden wings that beetles rarely use: “It was as if they had forgotten they were even there.” This observation resonates the desire for fulfillment within all the characters, particularly Margaret, who walks through the British Museum with an ache in her shoulder– an embodiment of her own hidden wings?

Despite these evocative images, Olsen stays resolutely attached to an academic intellect. A studied attention to details subtly and overtly reveals the era, class, gender and education level of each character. Although Olsen’s metaphoric imagery connects these disparate voices into a cohesive narrative, the emotional depth of individual characters is only half-explored. Instead, literary criticism becomes the authoritative voice with frequent excerpts from essays on Kafka. This structure can be thought-provoking, but often feels disruptive and pedantic.

Anxious Pleasures could uncover more of its own hidden wings – vivid metaphors and language – and allow itself to take flight.

Written by: Andrea Dulanto, February 3rd 2007