On essays and Harper's
(Warning: all content in this post lifted from Suz's page, for those of you who frequent both)
A few days back, while in the midst of smooching C-Hitch's broadside, Ms Smith brought up an article from the most recent Harper's that talks about the essay as a form. I thought the issue sparked a rather good debate, so instead of writing new content, I'll cut and paste.
Sue: Anyway, there was a fine article in the recent Harpers by Cristina Nehring discussing the state of the essay as literary form and the essayist as writer of ideas. I thought it was a great article bemoaning the current crop of essayists. The Thoreaus, Emersons, etc., of the past were essayists with a bite, Nehring argues. When they related the trivia of daily life, it was to use as a wedge to get at something broader and more universal about the human experience. Perhaps they missed the mark at times, perhaps they overgeneralized, but they weren't afraid to make these generalizations or to muse on what it is to be human. In contrast, Nehring sees the modern essayist as a writer who seems ashamed of his craft. . . . [Hitchens quote] . . . Now, you may not agree [with Da Hitch], but isn't it refreshing to have something concrete to agree or disagree with, rather than mealy mouthed statements so diluted as to not offend any party? Why, you may ask, is this refreshing, when Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and their equally opinionated ilk are so contemptible? Well that's easy. Challenge the Hitch on any statement and he'll come back at you with mountains of research, facts, supporting opinions, and apt comparisons. He'll offer intellectual and moral honesty as well as clarity. Those others of course, obfuscate rather than clarify, twist facts rather than straighten them out, and avoid truth and evidence like leprosy.
Capps: PC and postmodernity have done so much to 'decenter' all those universal subjects that essayists famously touch upon, that the essayist throws his hands in the air, and the rising writer avoids the genre. Even the respectable Hitchens is often detracted as a blowhard.
Sadly, I think that the moral and political right actually did inherit the reigns of the essay. Gore Vidal's reputation suffers even on the left, but Bill Bennett--before an after this hypocrisy scandal--is well favored. The right owns the premium on moral clarity, however it actually works out, and maybe there's not a sufficient balance of moral clarity for a writer to think it's really worth entering the debate.
Me: I think essayists today are too concerned with writing about the state of the world, and that discussion inevitably involves people and places that are timely, and ultimately, temporal in significance. Modern essayists don't know how to write anything that isn't either about a person or place that we all know, or, if it is personal, that isn't in the realm of total personal revelation--using their guts for ink.
I think the good essayists of the past were able to write about the specific ways they interacted with the world as opposed to the ways the world dramatically affected or changed them. The essays were personal, but not prying, and this detachment often led to a more literary style, more like the novel in symbolism and description. When and where today would ever see Woolf's "Death of a Moth" or Huxley's "Meditation on the Moon." For that matter, essays by Baldwin, White, and Ellison are all adept at processing the world outside their window without having to let the reader into their living room. The result is a feeling of true communication as opposed to mere observation. I saw it in my personal essay class--all anyone wanted to write about were alcoholic moms or terminally ill fathers or losing one's virginity on Sept. 10, 2001. It's a personal story, but not one from which I can draw complex facets of the grand human experience.
Sue: Well, today we have professional pundits and columnists who do write about the "state of the world" kind of issues, and I don't think that Nehring is really considering these when she passes judgment. But I think you make a good point with your communication vs. observation distinction. Sounds about right to me.
Me: Sorry, I wasn't talking about the pundits, editorialists, et. al. I meant extended essays on politics used to have a little personal flair to them, a little humility--and of course we're generalizing, so there are counterexamples on both sides--but look at, lemme see, White's "Bedfellows" or Orwell's "My Country Right or Left" (I think that's the one I mean).
In opposition, I present Jonathen Schnell's recent two-parter on war in Harper's, which I didn't read more than a couple pages of because it was so damn boring. Schnell referenced extensively literature from history that referenced war, something i'm not sure i can blame the guy for, but it doesn't appeal to me. Not to mention it was a goddamn treatise in length. Snoooooooze.
Capps: A-men on that Schnell piece. That's better than nyquil. I was shocked at how poorly written that was--history by assumption. And more shocked that it got the podium for two issues!
So the question I think is (and this is not having seen the most recent Harper's) - has Lewis Lapham [editor of Harper's] jumped the shark?
Sue: I don't know what "jumped the shark" means. Does that mean "lost his marbles?" And I agree with both of you. THat war thing was absolutely unreadable.
Capps: Yeah, jumped the shark means something like reached his pinnacle and started the decline. Apparently it comes from an episode of Happy Days where the Fonze jumped a motorcycle over a shark tank. It's a point of no return.
I remember in Lewis Lapham's editorial page one issue he wrote this bizarre 'vision' of America in comparison to Rome. It wasn't MoDo passable-bad, it was just nuts. The anti-war stuff had been escalating for a while, and then suddenly it looked as if Lapham were foaming from the mouth.
Me: I can tell you exactly when Lapham strapped on his goggles and filled up the shark tank: the December 2002 issue, featuring McGovern's "The Case for Liberalism." That issue, cover to cover, with the exception of one atrocious and pointless article about Sacajawea, was insightful, interesting, well written, and poignant. It attacked the impending war from many different sides, and all with subtlety: ideologically in McGovern's piece; from the front lines in the work of a Gulf War I vet; by examining the viewpoint of a "crazed" opponent, in excerpts from a kamikaze pilot's cockpit manual; and by showing the reverberations of war, through a short story about a WWII nurse. Since this zenith, Lapham has tumbled to his nadir (witholding judgement from the most recent issue, which I have not read because of finals). Foaming at the mouth is a good way to put it. I think, at times, he's seemed like the literary equivalent of those anti-war folks who think a protest is synonomous with a costume party.
Maybe now that the war's over, Lapham, like the Hitch, will settle down.
(Warning: all content in this post lifted from Suz's page, for those of you who frequent both)
A few days back, while in the midst of smooching C-Hitch's broadside, Ms Smith brought up an article from the most recent Harper's that talks about the essay as a form. I thought the issue sparked a rather good debate, so instead of writing new content, I'll cut and paste.
Sue: Anyway, there was a fine article in the recent Harpers by Cristina Nehring discussing the state of the essay as literary form and the essayist as writer of ideas. I thought it was a great article bemoaning the current crop of essayists. The Thoreaus, Emersons, etc., of the past were essayists with a bite, Nehring argues. When they related the trivia of daily life, it was to use as a wedge to get at something broader and more universal about the human experience. Perhaps they missed the mark at times, perhaps they overgeneralized, but they weren't afraid to make these generalizations or to muse on what it is to be human. In contrast, Nehring sees the modern essayist as a writer who seems ashamed of his craft. . . . [Hitchens quote] . . . Now, you may not agree [with Da Hitch], but isn't it refreshing to have something concrete to agree or disagree with, rather than mealy mouthed statements so diluted as to not offend any party? Why, you may ask, is this refreshing, when Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly and their equally opinionated ilk are so contemptible? Well that's easy. Challenge the Hitch on any statement and he'll come back at you with mountains of research, facts, supporting opinions, and apt comparisons. He'll offer intellectual and moral honesty as well as clarity. Those others of course, obfuscate rather than clarify, twist facts rather than straighten them out, and avoid truth and evidence like leprosy.
Capps: PC and postmodernity have done so much to 'decenter' all those universal subjects that essayists famously touch upon, that the essayist throws his hands in the air, and the rising writer avoids the genre. Even the respectable Hitchens is often detracted as a blowhard.
Sadly, I think that the moral and political right actually did inherit the reigns of the essay. Gore Vidal's reputation suffers even on the left, but Bill Bennett--before an after this hypocrisy scandal--is well favored. The right owns the premium on moral clarity, however it actually works out, and maybe there's not a sufficient balance of moral clarity for a writer to think it's really worth entering the debate.
Me: I think essayists today are too concerned with writing about the state of the world, and that discussion inevitably involves people and places that are timely, and ultimately, temporal in significance. Modern essayists don't know how to write anything that isn't either about a person or place that we all know, or, if it is personal, that isn't in the realm of total personal revelation--using their guts for ink.
I think the good essayists of the past were able to write about the specific ways they interacted with the world as opposed to the ways the world dramatically affected or changed them. The essays were personal, but not prying, and this detachment often led to a more literary style, more like the novel in symbolism and description. When and where today would ever see Woolf's "Death of a Moth" or Huxley's "Meditation on the Moon." For that matter, essays by Baldwin, White, and Ellison are all adept at processing the world outside their window without having to let the reader into their living room. The result is a feeling of true communication as opposed to mere observation. I saw it in my personal essay class--all anyone wanted to write about were alcoholic moms or terminally ill fathers or losing one's virginity on Sept. 10, 2001. It's a personal story, but not one from which I can draw complex facets of the grand human experience.
Sue: Well, today we have professional pundits and columnists who do write about the "state of the world" kind of issues, and I don't think that Nehring is really considering these when she passes judgment. But I think you make a good point with your communication vs. observation distinction. Sounds about right to me.
Me: Sorry, I wasn't talking about the pundits, editorialists, et. al. I meant extended essays on politics used to have a little personal flair to them, a little humility--and of course we're generalizing, so there are counterexamples on both sides--but look at, lemme see, White's "Bedfellows" or Orwell's "My Country Right or Left" (I think that's the one I mean).
In opposition, I present Jonathen Schnell's recent two-parter on war in Harper's, which I didn't read more than a couple pages of because it was so damn boring. Schnell referenced extensively literature from history that referenced war, something i'm not sure i can blame the guy for, but it doesn't appeal to me. Not to mention it was a goddamn treatise in length. Snoooooooze.
Capps: A-men on that Schnell piece. That's better than nyquil. I was shocked at how poorly written that was--history by assumption. And more shocked that it got the podium for two issues!
So the question I think is (and this is not having seen the most recent Harper's) - has Lewis Lapham [editor of Harper's] jumped the shark?
Sue: I don't know what "jumped the shark" means. Does that mean "lost his marbles?" And I agree with both of you. THat war thing was absolutely unreadable.
Capps: Yeah, jumped the shark means something like reached his pinnacle and started the decline. Apparently it comes from an episode of Happy Days where the Fonze jumped a motorcycle over a shark tank. It's a point of no return.
I remember in Lewis Lapham's editorial page one issue he wrote this bizarre 'vision' of America in comparison to Rome. It wasn't MoDo passable-bad, it was just nuts. The anti-war stuff had been escalating for a while, and then suddenly it looked as if Lapham were foaming from the mouth.
Me: I can tell you exactly when Lapham strapped on his goggles and filled up the shark tank: the December 2002 issue, featuring McGovern's "The Case for Liberalism." That issue, cover to cover, with the exception of one atrocious and pointless article about Sacajawea, was insightful, interesting, well written, and poignant. It attacked the impending war from many different sides, and all with subtlety: ideologically in McGovern's piece; from the front lines in the work of a Gulf War I vet; by examining the viewpoint of a "crazed" opponent, in excerpts from a kamikaze pilot's cockpit manual; and by showing the reverberations of war, through a short story about a WWII nurse. Since this zenith, Lapham has tumbled to his nadir (witholding judgement from the most recent issue, which I have not read because of finals). Foaming at the mouth is a good way to put it. I think, at times, he's seemed like the literary equivalent of those anti-war folks who think a protest is synonomous with a costume party.
Maybe now that the war's over, Lapham, like the Hitch, will settle down.
posted by Matt at 10:28 AM
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