On Marxist Criticism

Though I am admittedly as ideologically far away from Marxism as a person could probably be, I must confess that I have found the Marxist approach to literary theory to be a compelling one. The questions raised by Marxists, such as whose story is being told, what the economic conditions were at the time of publication, and what kind of ideology is reflected in the text, are all, I believe, intriguing and vital ways to examine a text closely.

As someone interested in the field of publishing, I found the figures presented in Richard Ohmann's article "The Shaping of a Canon: U.S. Fiction, 1960-1975" to be revealing. On page 1884 of the text, Ohmann lists the number of ads vs. the page of reviews from the big publishing houses. The numbers were not surprising. Publishing giants like Random House and Little, Brown had the highest number of advertisements and the highest number of reviews, while smaller houses had considerably smaller numbers in both topics. Though the article was published years ago, I believe Ohmann's point is still valid.

Certainly, these numbers reflect scary facts for Marxist critics. Marxist criticism attempts to challenge the system of power in society, while the world of publishing seems to play into the idealogies of the bourgeoisie. In this way, the dominant "class" in publishing (groups such as Random House, for example) oppresses the lower "classes" in publishing, such as Ohmann's listed houses of Dutton, Lippincourt, and Harvard.

The issues of economic and political power have always interested, and yet I've rarely, if ever, applied these subjects to my literary encounters. After reading Ohmann's article and doing some independent research on Marxist criticism, I wonder how my readings of certain texts would be altered when approaching from a Marxist viewpoint. Whose story is being told in this text? What audience is being targeted by this text? All of these are vital questions when approaching a piece of literature as a Marxist critic.

More than the other views of literary criticism we've encountered so far this semester, I've found Marxist Criticism to be a compelling way to engage with literature. In examining literary texts through a different viewpoint and questioning the ideologies represented in the text, I may develop fuller and deeper understanding of a text. I find Marxist criticism to be an intriguing way to critique a text because it forces one to go beyond a selfish reading from one's own background and viewpoint to a reading that takes into account all economic groups and political ideologies.

What is a classic?

In a recent class discussion on what criteria deems a piece of literature to be a classic, there characteristics of broad acclamation, enduring acclamation, and universality seemed to be generally agreed on.

In many ways, I tend to agree that these characteristics are descriptive of classic literature. Certainly, classic literature seems to have some enduring qualities - if not, why would we continue to study the works of Chaucer or Shakespeare? There is a quality to classic literature that seems to continue to endure, allowing for these works to be appreciated for centuries.

But what is this quality of endurance? Do we continue to be that astounded by the language or storytelling ability of Shakespeare, or is it something more than that? I would venture to say that in many cases, the quality of universality has made classic literature endure. I think, for instance, that one of the reasons Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye has come to be considered a classic is the universal feelings of apathy, depression, and frustration we've all felt at some time. People continue to read it because people sometimes feel the same way Holden Caulfield feels.

Broad acclamation, however, is harder to easily define and describe. I can't say that I know what makes a piece of literature receive broad praise. The literature that really blows me away is that which tells an incredible story with amazing, descriptive language, teaching me lessons on not only how to be a superior storyteller, but how to use form and language to attain perfection in writing.

Of course, each of us has our own ideas on what makes a superior story. Or, we view the perfection of form and language in different ways, each of us looking for something different to learn from to perfect our own understanding about writing.

I find this notion of what makes classic literature to be classic an interesting one. Even with the few characteristics I've briefly fleshed out here, there seems to be a wealth of different opinion on this subject. And yet, the classics will endure, in spite of our not knowing why the work is truly a classic.

The Death of the Author

In discussing Structuralism in class on Tuesday, we examined the various ways in which Structuralism and Formalism are similar. In particular, weooked at the similarities that exist between Structuralism and Formalism in their view of the author. Indeed, both of these schools of thought are not concerned with authorship, with Todorov never even mentioning authors in his essay and Roland Barthes declaring "the death of the author" in his essay.

In each of the schools of criticism we have examined this semester, I have been intrigued with the role of the author. While there were certainly great differences between Romanticism and the other criticisms we have studied in terms of their view of literature and reading, there does seem to be a consensus that the author is meaningless. I grant that on the surface the Romantics view of the author may seem strikingly different from that of the Structuralists or Formalists, but upon closer examination, I would argue that they may be similar than one may initially believe.

The Romantics believed that the author was a vessel of sorts, a channel between the spiritual and the human. In this way, the author is irrelevant to the overall success of the text - a piece of literature could be just as successful by a different "author." By the term author I mean another channel or agent in touch with the spiritual world of the origins of literature. This concept is an, in my opinion, an intriguing one. In the Romantics view, would the success of a piece of literature change were it interpreted by another agent? I believe they would say that it doesn't, so long as it accurately interprets or makes an impression of the spiritual.

In this way, the Romantics seem to have a similar view to authorship as the Structuralists or the Formalists. The author is pretty much irrelevant, and their intent is fairly meaningless. Literature is something beyond this human world, and the author is never as important as the spirituality of the text.

While I'm not sure that I have yet figured out my own view on the role of the author, I find the views of these critics intriguing, and in many ways, startling. It will be interesting to consider how my views might change as I engage with other forms of criticism throughout the rest of the semester.

What is Literature? Part 2

In my previous blog entry, I explored the issue of how to examine the Wiki novel in light of our frequent class discussions on what constitutes literature, what is reading, and what is an author. While I still don't have concrete conclusions on what the Wiki novel says about authorship, literature, and reading, I was still intrigued with the notion of online novels. With these questions still fresh in my mind, I examined another site for online literature, Hypertextopia.

Hypertextopia did a lot the work for me, devoting a whole page to defining literature. In Hypertextopia's view, defining literature is generally avoided because it leads to "false dichotomies" that separate any written word into literature and "not literature." Nevertheless, Hypertextopia attempts to define what they deem is worthy to be considered literature. They write,

If we accept the premise that literature is the highest expression of written language, then literature is characterized by a high density of meaning. Just as density is the amount of substance packed into a given space, the degree to which a work is literary is proportional to the amount of meaning packed into the words.

I find this definition to be intriguing, to say the least, especially in light of our class discussions on the significance of authorial intent when determining meaning. I'm sure that Wimsatt and Beardsley would argue that the meaning "packed into the words" is meaningless, and it's only significant what meaning is extracted from the words.

Ultimately, Hypertextopia defines literature as the body of work which is packed full of meaning. While I belive this definition certainly has some flaws, it's an intriguing way to begin examining what literature is, and more interestingly, what literature is in light of technology.

The Wiki novel: Literature or Not?

In our recent class discussions we've been focusing a lot on what constitutes literature, or authorship, or even reading, so needless to say, as I poked around the Wiki novel A Million Penguins yesterday, these questions repeatedly came up in my thoughts.

I found A Million Penguins to be fairly interesting, not just for the questions it raises about the nature of online social networking today, but also for the way it has in some ways manipulated what I have to come to define as literature. To my understanding, the Wiki novel was composed entirely of numerous different creative writing submissions, all compounded together to form a single cohesive "novel." In setting this project in motion, the creators of the Wiki novel sought to examine whether it is possible to create a solitary fictional voice from a collection of different writers, and in doing so, also examined what it literature, what is an author, and what is reading.

Truthfully, I didn't find the results of the Wiki novel to be that groundbreaking. While the premise of a combined novel is interesting, the end result of the work felt disjointed, and I didn't feel compelled to continue reading. These impressions made me consider what it is, then, to be an author, and whether or not a unified work must come from one author. In the case of A Million Penguins, it seems to be that in response to the question of whether a work must have a single author to be cohesive, the answer is a resounding yes.

When it comes to determining whether the Wiki novel can be considered a work of literature, my response isn't so emphatic. In the beginning, there seemed to be a storyline of sorts, which grew more and more convoluted with each passing chapter. Ultimately, there didn't seem to be a point to it all. It felt like 21 short stories with all the same character names, not one cohesive piece of literature. This led me to wonder if there needs to be a point to the work for something to be considered literature insofar as the author (or authors) must have a vision of where the work will lead and what they are trying to communicate for it to be literature. If I just put a bunch of random chapters together from several different pieces of literature, would the resulting work be a piece of literature? I don't know that I have the answer, but I believe that these questions have given way to even more intriguing dilemmas in determining what is literature.

Finally, I thought about what reading is in relation to the Wiki novel. Truthfully, I find it incredibly difficult to read any piece of literature online, and I grow impatient and begin to scroll through the work faster than I'm reading it. This brought up the tangibility of the printed word, in that it's harder for me to skip several chapters in a book that I'm reading than it is to skim down several chapters in a make believe Wiki novel. As the presence of literature on the internet grows, I believe it will lead to interesting questions on whether they nature of reading will change as well. Will we still dedicate the same time and attention to something that is displayed in front of us on a glowing computer monitor? In the case of A Million Penguins, I confess that my time and attention could have spent reading something more worthwhile.

Nonetheless, I did find A Million Penguins to be interesting, if only for the fact that it raises complicated questions about the nature of literature, authors, and reading in an increasingly media savvy world.

Eliot, Modernism, and the Paradox

In my continuing internal debate about the merits of Formalist criticism, I came across an interesting article discussing the relationship between T.S. Eliot and Modernism. "T.S. Eliot and Modernity", written by Louis Menand, begins to assess the relationship between the Modernist movement and Eliot. Menand writes,

Eliot never courted the academy; he took the opportunity, on various occasions, of insulting it. But the modern academy, at a crucial moment in its history, made an icon of Eliot. And this suggests that the answer to the question of Eliot's success is likely to be found not simply in what he had to say but also in the institutional needs his writing was able to serve.

Menand raises an interesting point. In our last several classes of Literary Criticism, we've discussed Eliot, his ideas, and his influence. And yet, in Menand's view at least, Eliot despised the institutions of higher learning. The paradoxical nature of Eliot is intriguing - Menand goes on to write that Modernism, as Eliot knew of it, was a reaction against the modern. And so the paradox continues. Or does it?

In Menand's view, romantic ideas still persisted in Eliot's culture of modernity, a situation which Eliot found deplorable. Certainly, Eliot's writing does seem to be reacting strongly against Emerson's Romanticism. Eliot focuses on literary technique over divine intervention, and form over content. And yet, there continues to be something in Eliot's writing that remains paradoxical, or even suspect.

Every writer has their own beliefs and experiences which invade their writing, no matter how much they might wish for their writing to be devoid of personal biography. For Eliot to argue otherwise is, in my opinion, nonsensical. Certainly, there may be overly sentimental or biographical poems which may not be worthy of study, yet it seems impossible that any writer, ever, can be completely unaffected by their personal experiences.

Ultimately, there seems to be some sort of impossible paradox in Eliot's writing. Menand writes that Eliot's criticism and writing were admittedly ad hoc in that they were writing criticism which applied to their own writing. For me, however, Eliot's criticism goes beyond simply ad hoc. While Eliot certainly offered valuable ideas for readers to consider while reading poetry, I ultimately find his writing to be to paradoxical to put much stock in.