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I remember seeing a series of these paintings in a magazine (The Atlantic, or Esquire I think) accompanied by some very good writing…(the author of which I fail to remember as well…some help I am…anyway), the way Andrew Wyeth could depict sunlight on skin, and particularly on body hair, was extraordinarily beautiful, erotic, warming.
W.D. Snodgrass has died at 83 (via Bookslut). I picked up a book of his essays about six months ago. This from the Preface to In Radical Pursuit:
"In general, writing prose is so difficult for me that I never attempt it until I feel fairly sure I have something new to say about a subject. Most often this has led me into areas beneath the consciousness of the author himself. That is partly because other more conscious areas of the work have already been fully covered by other critics; partly because I feel that the unconscious areas of thought and emotion are of far greater importance than conscious belief or intention. Nonetheless, I don not intend any of my interpretations to be definitive or to exclude any of the more conscious interpretations. Coming to literature as an amateur, not as a specialist, my aim is to broaden the reader’s experience of the work of art, not to limit or control it."
Sounds a bit vaporish to me; then again, writers are often surprised by what they have written and how it is interpreted, sometimes they’re even enlightened.
Back in 2004 Dan Green wrote a post on ‘books intended to enlighten interested readers–all interested readers–about the nature and possibilities of literature, in effect to show them how to read fiction, poetry, and serious drama more profitably…’ He listed ten such books:
Richard Poirier, A World Elsewhere: The Place of Style in American Literature
Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism
Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction
Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel
Richard Chase, The American Novel and Its Tradition
Eric Auerbach, Mimesis
Cleanth Brooks, The Well-Wrought Urn
William Empson, 7 Types of Ambiguity
Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden
Tony Tanner, City of Words: American Fiction 1950-1970
Following Dan’s dictum, I’d like to offer up a more comprehensive list, containing critical works which exemplify outstanding commentary, and guidance; which explain what we have read and what it means, and tell us what we should read, and why. Most take the form of essays and reviews. This is a work in progress, so please, if you see gaps, and have titles that you think deserve inclusion, please let me know (for online resources, check this out).
***
And before anyone says anything…please stay tuned for a Literary Theory reading list.
Now Photo By Steve Payne
"Tanja Jacobs is a well known actress, director, teacher and coach. She has worked in the professional theatre since 1981, and performed at most major theatres in Canada. She has been nominated for ten Dora Mavor Moore Awards and has won twice. As a director, her credits include 1002 Nights, Johann's Cabinet of Wonders, Goddess, and Mid-Life Crisis . On television, besides her role as federal employee SM3 Sexsmith on Power Play, Jacobs guest starred on many Canadian shows including Ready or Not and Street Legal. Film credits include "Trial by Jury" and "Loser"." She recently finished a run at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa as Winnie in Samuel Beckett's Happy Days directed by Leah Cherniak.
Happy Days, written in 1961, observes determined human optimism in the face of a universe without meaning. Winnie, Beckett’s "hopeful futilitarian" is buried up to her waist in the earth, woken and summoned to bed each day by the same disembodied bell. Throughout the days, she performs a series of carefully observed rituals all related to the contents of a worn, old black purse. She combs her hair, applies lipstick, painstakingly examines a toothbrush, toys with a nail file, a tube of toothpaste and a revolver, all the while chattering at her inattentive companion, Willie. Hopeless yet hopeful; bleak yet funny, Happy Days is Beckett’s "testament to the resourcefulness of the human spirit"
Tanja and I talk here about playing Winnie, the difficulty of working at cliff's edge without a narrative, talking, doing nothing and the need for communication and attention, loneliness, mid-life marriages, revolvers, supportive fellow actors, the quality of attachment and mirroring, the imperative to carry on, suffering and the avoidance of and surrendering to pain in front of an audience, revisiting moments of terror and fright and aloneness and the agony of doing this as someone who has been abandoned, the unbearable parts of being human, and how the use of simple descriptives can generate profound distilled moments, poems of events.
To start off with I quote V.S. Pritchett on Beckett. Read the quote here.
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Shortly on into this plot-less slice of life, and I was tempted to dismiss it as little more than an irritating, pointless fluffy chick flick. Thanks, however, to a dogged insistence on the part of director Mike Leigh to exhibit the relentless good nature of Poppy, our lead character, she of the sausage-free lovelife, plus a contagious, giggly trumbone-farting score, Happy Go Lucky succeeds where the novel Netherland fails; it forces me to engage and bond with Poppy, to the point where I am as happy when leaving the theatre as she is, where I leave her, basking and beaming in her row boat on a pond, in the middle of London, musing about happiness and love on a lovely sunny afternoon. Nice to see Mr. Leigh in a looser collar than normal, unbuttoned. Stand out performances by Eddie Marson as Scott the vitriolic, misanthropic, put-upon driving instructor; and Irish actor Stanley Townsend (Mad Eye Moody!) as the extraordinarily moving, virtually speechless tramp. His face and eyes emote much more than words could say anyway.
Gustave Courbet Le château de Chillon (détail), 1874 huile sur toile 86 x 112,5 cm Ornans, musée Courbet
The Prisoner of Chillon by Lord Byron
VI
Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls:
A thousand feet in depth below
Its massy waters meet and flow;
Thus much the fathom-line was sent
From Chillon’s snow-white battlement,
Which round about the wave inthrals:
A double dungeon wall and wave
Have made — and like a living grave
Below the surface of the lake
The dark vault lies wherein we lay.
We heard it ripple night and day;
Sounding o’er our heads it knock’d;
And I have felt the winter’s spray
Wash through the bars when winds were high
And wanton in the happy sky;
And then the very rock hath rock’d,
And I have felt it shake, unshock’d,
Because I could have smiled to see
The death that would have set me free.
XIV
It might be months, or years, or days,
I kept no count, I took no note,
I had no hope my eyes to raise,
And clear them of their dreary mote;
At last men came to set me free;
I ask’d not why, and reck’d not where;
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter’d or fetterless to be,
I learn’d to love despair.
And thus when they appear’d at last,
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage — and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch’d them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place,
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill — yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn’d to dwell;
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are: — even I
Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.
This list courtesy of High Spot consultants who will be updating it on a regular basis:
@Abbeville / Abbeville Press
@AlgonquinBooks / Algonquin Books
@AmbassadorIntl / Ambassador International
@AMACOMBooks / American Management Association
@AndrewsMcMeel / Andrews McMeel Publishing
@AnnickPress / Annick Press
@AnnKingman / Ann Kingman, District Sales Manager for Random House
@Arsenalpulp / Janice Arsenal Beley, Marketing Director at Arsenal Pulp Press
@AtriaBooks / Atria Books
@Bookgirl96 / Publicity Director at Atria Books
@booksin140 / Marketer for University of Toronto Press, book reviewer
@bsandusky / Brett Sandusky, Marketing Manager at Kaplan Publishing
@centerstreet / Center Street
@chelseagreen / Chelsea Green Publishing Company
@chriswebb / Chris Webb, Associate Publisher at John Wiley & Sons
@davidmoldawer / David Moldawer, editor at Portfolio / Penguin Group (USA)
@debbiestier / Debbie Stier, SVP & Associate Publisher at HarperStudio
@diybookgirl / Sarah Yu, Self-Counsel Press
@DUKEpress / Duke University Press
@DzancBooks / Dzanc Books
@ecwpress / ECW Press
@elleinthecity / Ellen Gerstein, Marketing Director at Wiley Publishing
@FaberBooks / Faber & Faber
@GraywolfPress / Graywolf Press
@GroundwoodBooks / Groundwood Books
@HarlequinBooks / Harlequin Books, Digital Team
@HarperAcademic / HarperAcademic
@HarperCollinsCa / Harper Collins Canada
@harperstudio / HarperStudio
@HouseofAnansi / House of Anansi
@IslandPress / Island Press
@iupress / marketing manager, Indiana University Press
@jamesoreilly / James O’Reilly, Travelers’ Tales/Solas House, Inc.
@jcsimonds / Jacqueline Simonds, Beagle Bay Books
@jonedm / David M. Jones, Edamar Inc.
@julietrelstad / Julie Trelstad, Plain White Press
@littlebrown / Little, Brown and Co.
@markcoker / Mark Coker, Smashwords
@Milkweed_Books / Milkweed Editions
@norton_fiction / W. W. Norton
@nyrbclassics / NYRB Classics
@NYUpress / New York University Press
@open_letter / Open Letter (University of Rochester)
@orbitbooks / Orbit Books
@oupblog / blog editor at Oxford University Press USA
@pearson / Pearson
@PenguinCanada / Penguin Canada
@PenguinBooks / PenguinBooks
@randomhouse / Random House
@RandomHouseCA / Random House of Canada, Digital Team
@redrockpress / Red Rock Press
@rmbooks1 / Rocky Mountain Books
@SimonSaysCanada / Simon & Schuster Canada
@simon_saysUK / Simon & Schuster UK
@slipdown / Walt Shiel, Slipdown Mountain Publications
@softskull / Soft Skull Press
@SterlingBooks / Sterling Publishing
@tstcpublishing / TSTC Publishing
@UChicagoPress / University of Chicago Press
@UCPress / University of California Press
@UMinnPress / University of Minnesota Press
@unbridledbooks / Unbridled Books
@uncpressblog / University of North Carolina Press
@UofMPress / University of Michigan Press
@utpress / University of Toronto Press
@WorkmanPub / Workman Publishing
@worleygirl / Amy Worley, VP of Marketing at Andrews McMeel Publishing
@Wrox / Wrox, publisher of programming books
@yalepress / Yale Press
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