A Thought About Reviews
by Johannes on Apr.20, 2012, under Uncategorized
Today I thought about this (and I’ve thought about this off and on for some time): what is the role of what one might call “artistic context” in reviews? Or blurbs for that matter. When I write them I tend to want to find connections between different writers and artists (hopefully across media, genres etc) because I am interested in seeing how different people work on concepts and ideas, and also because if the reader of the review likes one of the artists, they’re likely to want to search out the others. So for example in my last post I made a connection between Sara Tuss Efrik and Nathalie Djurberg.Or when I reviewed Kate Durbin’s Ravenous Audience for Raintaxi a while back, I referred to the gurlesque, Plath. Judy Grahn and the Rodarte designers.(Though it should be said that someone complained on facebook that I was being a snoozy academic pedant in the Durbin review.)
But it seems this is a no-no in a lot of reviewing and blurbing. Is this because that would mean that the writer was not absolutely original? In fact, I more often find reviews stating: this personal is absolutely original. It oftens seems almost defensive to me: here’s this wild book but don’t you try to expect anything more in this vein. It’s often about a daring writer/artist who explores aesthetic zones that are not usually represented in big presses, or university presses, or not reviewed. Often I come upon these statements of absolute originality for writers I like, and I think, “no actually I can think of a dozen people who are working a similar terrain.” That doesn’t mean that the person in question isn’t original or good; it just means that I can think of people who are similar.
Someone who does do quite a bit of contextual type of readings is Steve Burt (the elliptical poets, the new thing poets etc). Often I find those articles quite perceptive, and they are also articles that tend to generate discussion. My problem with his articles is that they sometimes claim to take into account everything, to capture all of poetry. In some sense that’s why I suppose they generate so much discussion (otherwise people might not care), but there’s also something stabilizing about it, and perhaps this is why people shy away from such readings. Certainly, Steve has received a lot of criticism for his articles.
But mostly this kind of approach seems to be used negatively: This is the heroic poet who is not writing poetry like that wave of soft surrealist (or something like that), read a blurb on a recent book (I liked the book, not the blurb). The genuine writer is one, the one who is part of a orbit of writers is just a follower, imitator, kitsch.
Anybody have any thoughts about this?
April 20th, 2012 on 5:17 pm
PS
I remember when I was in grad school at Iowa – where we really had very little theory, very little even sense of literary history, of perspective on the present/contemporary (however fraught that concept is) – Steve’s “Elliptical Poets” came out and that really made sense to a lot of people, gave a lot of people perspective on something we were really in the middle of (as Jorie Graham’s students).
Johannes
April 20th, 2012 on 7:53 pm
From Facebook:
Sheila Fiona Black: I think the most interesting and valuable reviews are all about artistic context. Just noting someone is a heroic gunslinger who doesn’t write like anyone else ever doesn’t make for much of a stimulating context for review. We need engaged critics in order to make sense of the hummus of what makes new poetry–especially now when the contexts can be so complex. I love critics especially who are somewhat elusive and productive themselves–linking odd ideas one would not expect to find together. My idol Walter Benjamin springs to mind here, but there are countless others….
April 20th, 2012 on 11:09 pm
Johannes,
I find contextual reviews quite helpful, if nothing else, as a map for further reading if the book being reviewed turns out being any good. Reading this blog, or what to call it, I’ve added quite a couple of names to my reading list, based on possible connections with texts I’m already familiar somewhat familiar with. I like the mix of academic and dark underground rabbits.
You’re probably onto something there with the “original” bit, perhaps connected in some way to an aversion to “name-dropping”… a superficial linking of texts, like the whole wonderful interweb. I feel what’s missing in the so called “small” press is precisely this kind of engagement, connecting of texts, the reading of and writing about the texts, academically or otherwise, preferably also critically and by people who have no other connection to the writer than the work. It’s only so fun to be original when no one’s reading you.
k
April 21st, 2012 on 2:23 am
I Dog-Ear the Death Card So You Get It Every Time
M. Perloff’s defense of the rear guard in Uncreative Writing turns on its displacement from war to the arts. There has never been a rear guard action in the arts. The Song of Roland depicts our classic rear guard, covering main force military retreat, heroically to its death—horn resounding o’er the hills until all fall. Today the Situationists have been stripped of their situation. How soon we forget. Politics is economics; a Materialism that we blithely elide in bloodless cultural critique. Debord fought tooth and claw against the gentrification of his wild ass Quartier Saint Germain, which obliterated that historic arts enclave just like real estate speculators and NYU bought up New York’s East Village. In a last ditch dying effort he identified on film with the suicide charge of the Light Brigade and the massacre of Custer at the Little Big Horn. Custer never made a “stand.” Caught boxed in, his cavalry was slaughtered wholesale by superior numbers. Idealist realist Guy Debord harbored no illusions. Capital has out flanked, out moneyed then out gunned Labor at every turn.
What Perloff describes instead is the consolidating action of cynics who talk for a living. Art consultants, sales reps, college profs, critics: they turn art into articles. Every piss ant theorist wants to name the next new age, art movement, “Puissant” school or poetic craze. Prime marketing maxim: It’s not the product; it’s the story about the product. Hell, they got such a hard on for it they’ll duck out and create one. Perloff states that some of the best generals commandeered her arriere garde. No doubt about it. Seizing and holding plunder won by others, they damn sure take no chances. Old soldiers never die, young ones do.
Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle
April 21st, 2012 on 2:31 am
Sue Me, Shoot Bullets Thru Me (Sinatra)
Marjorie Perloff’s book is Unoriginal Genius. Uncreative Writing (by Kenneth Goldsmith) is another market item.
G C-H
April 21st, 2012 on 3:11 am
I also like reviews that attempt to contextualize the work in question with regard to the writer’s earlier and/or later work. One of the deeper pleasures is reading everything an author has written, and reading individual works in full knowledge of what they represent in terms of an expansion or continuation of vision, or a turning away toward some new destination.
This is especially true of writers whose body of work seems to be part of a larger project.
April 21st, 2012 on 10:15 pm
Written fast and late, between my for-shit night job and my job that just blows chunks (I work 7 days a week) my comment above boasts flaws.
Rectified Remix (New Moon)
I Dog Ear the Death Card So You Get It Every Time
M. Perloff’s defense of the rear guard in Unoriginal Genius trades on its displacement from war to art. There has never been a rear guard action in the arts. The Song of Roland depicts our classic rear guard, covering main force military retreat, heroically to its death—horn resounding o’er the hills until all fall. Today the Situationists have been stripped of their situation. How soon we forget. Politics is economics; a Materialism that we blithely elide in bloodless cultural critique. Debord fought tooth and claw against the gentrification of his wild ass Quartier Saint Germain, which obliterated that historic arts enclave just like real estate speculators and NYU bought up New York’s East Village. In a fatal final offensive he identified on film with the suicide charge of the Light Brigade and the massacre of Custer at the Little Big Horn. Yellow Hair didn’t “stand.” Foxed, boxed in, his cavalry got slaughtered wholesale by superior numbers. Idealist realist Guy Debord harbored few illusions. Capital has out flanked, out moneyed then out gunned Labor at every turn.
What Perloff lauds is instead the feeding frenzy of cynics who talk for a living. Art consultants, sales reps, college profs, critics: they forge art into articles. Every piss ant theorist wants to name the next new age, art movement, “Puissant” school or poetic craze. Prime marketing maxim: It’s not the product; it’s the story about the product. Hell, they got such a hard on for it they’ll go out and create one. Con$olidation. Perloff states that some of the best generals commandeered her arriere garde. Doubtless. Seizing and keeping plunder won by others they cover their own asses. Old soldiers never die, young ones do.
Geoffrey Cruickshank-Hagenbuckle
May 2nd, 2012 on 3:34 am
I am not sure why artistic contextualization is so irritating except to say that perhaps it is very challenging to one’s ego (or the idea that we may have achieved something entirely on our own in a vacuum, an idea that seems to continue despite its obvious paradoxes). I think it is natural for the brain to create connections, to draw them out and find them; it is fascinating to me to see where one artist working in an entirely different medium, coming from an entirely different experience of life has somehow converged with another artist. Isn’t this interesting to other people? To pretend that one artists has somehow impossibly done something completely on his/her own without influences or without being a part of his/her surroundings…this is phony. It is an illusion we keep buying into.