NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS » Literary Criticism

Volleys about David Foster Wallace

Nigel Beale — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 17:46:41 +0000

In his recent piece on David Foster Wallace in the New York Review of Books, Wyatt Mason sets up Ford Madox Ford’s: I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find their path through what may be a sort [...]

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Reviewers versus Literary Critics, revisited

Nigel Beale — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 15:41:17 +0000

The recent contretemps brought on by Andre Alexis’s piece on the state of Canada’s critical culture (Walrus magazine here), has, I’d say, much to do with his conjoining the roles of journalist/reviewing and academic/ literary criticism, and incongruously criticizing the former for not practicing the latter. As Zach Wells puts it in his considered albeit [...]

Reviewers versus Literary Critics, revisited is a post from: NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Praise, Blurbs and Randall Jarrell’s White Blackbirds

Nigel Beale — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 18:36:58 +0000

I know, it’s a crow. Recent whirligigging over at The Guardian and at Salon.com about blurbs and hyperbolic praise reminds me again of how antithetical capitalism is to honest criticism; also of how raised expectations necessarily lead to disappointment, to ebay bidder letdown. It magnifies too, the truth that most of what is written, regardless [...]

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Spit and Polish in latest CNQ

Nigel Beale — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:05:11 +0000

The latest issue of the newly re-designed CNQ magazine contains a good piece by Ryan Bigge in which, when he isn’t carpet bombing the 2009 Giller Prize shortlist, he presents two interesting ideas: one, borrowing from Zadie Smith, that authors mistakenly trust professional editors, and are better off recruiting the heads of ’smart strangers,’ to [...]

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Top Ten Mysteries, 18th and 20th Century Books

Nigel Beale — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 00:29:33 +0000

Image from here. designer: e. mcknight kauffer Good to see The Top Ten Book Blog back in action. Here’s their Top Ten Books of the 20th Century 1. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (1955). “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul.” So begins the Russian master’s infamous novel about Humbert Humbert, 2. The Great [...]

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Northrop Frye’s Tangled Garden of Criticism

Nigel Beale — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 14:43:05 +0000

And here I thought Marshall McLuhan had the ‘market cornered’ on brilliant, obtuse, maddeningly self-contradictory Canadian prose. Northrop Frye’s conclusion to Literary History of Canada (U of T Press, 1965) is every bit of this. "The book", he writes, at its end, "is a tribute to the maturity of Canadian literary scholarship and criticism, whatever one [...]

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‘Community’ or ‘Creepy form of Collusion’?

Nigel Beale — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:54:22 +0000

Contrast what Andre Alexis says of ‘community’ and the importance of understanding the necessity and logic of creation, and in this "what is best about theory: the brief — inevitably brief, because every generation has to renovate the language and idea of criticism — sense that literature is one of the most startling things we [...]

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The ‘woefully incompetent’ and ‘pugnacious’ André Alexis

Nigel Beale — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 16:04:11 +0000

As is often the case, I regret not being able to spend more time on this – unfortunate as it may be, I must work elsewhere in order to keep myself swaddled in the lifestyle luxuries I’ve become accustomed to wearing – still: Save for the fact that his arguments are so flabby, ill-considered and peevish, [...]

The ‘woefully incompetent’ and ‘pugnacious’ André Alexis is a post from: NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

Describing your favourite book

Nigel Beale — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 23:55:30 +0000

Here are some of the words used by people who called in to CBC Radio’s Cross Country Check Up program last weekend to recommend their favourite books: "Sympathetic, simple, sticks in the mind, resonated with me, honest/funny, evocative, an honest report, closely observed, ambitious, offers a different perspective/world view" Describing your favourite book is a post from: [...]

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What’s Wrong with a little bloodsport?

Nigel Beale — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 15:59:47 +0000

Terry Eagleton in the New Statesman on Christopher Hitchens (via readysteadybook): I just turned down the offer of a public debate with him in the States. I’ve said what I want to say, and we wouldn’t have got anywhere – it would only have been a sort of bloodsport. Even then, Christopher was mesmerised by the idea [...]

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Audio Interview with Poet/Critic Carmine Starnino: On Canadian Poems and Poets Good and Bad.

Nigel Beale — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:35:32 +0000

Photo: Gaspereau Press. "Good reviewing," writes Carmine Starnino in the not-to-be-missed introduction to his A Lover’s Quarrel Essays and Reviews, "- reviewing that believes in literary failure – is invaluable because by calling one poem good and another less good, and adducing clear reasons for those claims, it offers one writerly interpretation of a particular achievement, [...]

Audio Interview with Poet/Critic Carmine Starnino: On Canadian Poems and Poets Good and Bad. is a post from: NIGEL BEALE NOTA BENE BOOKS

This Essay changed my mind about Zadie Smith

Nigel Beale — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 17:02:01 +0000

Zadie Smith has just come out with a new collection of ‘occasional’ essays entitled Changing My Mind. (Penguin, 2009). The first, ‘Their Eyes were Watching God: What does soulful mean?’ changed my mind about her.Very much for the better. Not so much because it represents an admission, but because first it’s an extremely well written, [...]

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‘Best’ always comes with a question mark

Nigel Beale — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:07:06 +0000

Here’s D.G. Myers on the usefulness of lists: My own view of statements about the “best” or “worst ever” is that they are interrogative challenges. The claims come with understood questions attached at the end: Lolita is the greatest English-language novel written since 1880, [isn’t it? What else is, then?]” ‘Best’ always comes with a question mark [...]

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Enough interesting things and serious engagement to make it worth reading

Nigel Beale — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:22:23 +0000

Good exchange in the comments section over at Alone on a Boreal Stage, led by Zach ‘Hawkweed’ Wells, who first off quotes American poet Robert Pinsky "I think that if an audience for any art is having a good time, they are willing to suspend the need for comprehension for a while—that’s part of the pleasure. [...]

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Vendler on the Critics’ answering look

Nigel Beale — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:53:54 +0000

"The senses and the imagination furnish rhythms for the poet. The rhythms of the poet translate themselves back, in the mind of the reader, into the senses and the imagination. What is it about the critic that cannot rest content with this silent transaction? Most of the time the critic is just another reader, and [...]

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