¡Bemsha SWING!

10 sept 2005

Isn't satire supposed to be funny and intelligent? Otherwise it's just crap.

8 comentarios:

Gary dijo...: Pretty much, yeah.; 10:15 p. m.
Jim Behrle dijo...: I disagree: I think the highest role of satire it to effect change. If it happens to be funny, happens to amuse, great. But if the satire effects no change, then it's merely clever.

Luv
Jimmy; 11:31 a. m.
Jonathan dijo...: Good point. Humor is the mechanism by which satire effects change. Without intelligence, it has no bite, and becomes ineffectual.; 2:56 p. m.
Ken Rumble dijo...: Yeah, how funny is Gulliver's Travels? A Modest Proposal? Off the top of my head and to refer to the obvious.

Not so funny (okay, some of MP gets me rolling on the floor, but only after I vomit up some cheesedog.)

Ken; 3:22 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: You can shed bitter tears of laughter when reading certain satirical works. Swift, Larra...; 3:26 p. m.
Anthony Robinson dijo...: Um, yeah, but how much change did Swift effect?

Satire may intend to effect change, but it rarely does...; 7:21 p. m.
Jim Behrle dijo...: Well change is really hard without like *tanks*. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN started that war. THE JUNGLE grossed a bunch of people out and made them vegetarians or whatever. It's the small victories. I'm just arguing that the point isn't necessarily to make some readers feel smarter and superior and make them laugh. The point is to ridicule and reform. If I could build a tank out of one of my poems, I'd effect some fucking change, you betcha.

Luv
Jimmy; 10:33 p. m.
Jim Behrle dijo...: And intelligence--like what the hell is that. Archie Bunker is some of my favorite satire--so good that nobody got it. It was the #1 show in America because a great number of people AGREED with Archie. Whoa, right? So much for the smartypants writers.; 10:36 p. m.

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Blurbs & Reviews

"Jonathan Mayhew’s new work belongs to a certain class of surprising books: those so obviously necessary once they appear that it apparently required a stroke of genius to come up with the idea for them."

--Daniel Katz

"Jonathan Mayhew's Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca-in translation, of course-as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon-the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the 20th century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute."

-Marjorie Perloff

"Enhanced by copious notes and an excellent bibliography, this book offers a perceptive, intriguing assessment of the Garcia Lorca created by the postwar generation of American poets." (Choice )

"Mayhew is a critic who is at the top of his game; he combines a breadth of knowlege of the field with acute analysis."

--John C. Wilcox, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Let me just cut through all the usual, boring book review preliminaries and say the following thing: Jonathan Mayhew has, in Apocryphal Lorca, written an amazing book. "

--Brandon Holmquest, Calque

"The great merit of Mayhew's study is his sustained effort to document and interrogate Lorca's reception, unique among American encounters with foreign literatures in its nature and extent."

--Lawrence Venuti, TLS.

"Se trata de Jonathan Mayhew y su extraordinario estudio Apocryphal Lorca. Translation, Parody, Kitsch. Esta obra se ocupa no de García Lorca sino de cómo los escritores estadounidenses han reinventado a Lorca, desde Spicer y Rothenberg hasta O’Hara y Koch. Asimismo, es una discusión de la Deep Image —¡cuánto hay que desmenuzar de ese capítulo!— y la manera en que la poética norteamericana se ha apropiado de lo lorqueano (o lorcaesco) y del concepto de lo 'otro' que éste representa. Éste es un libro repleto de sutilezas, de tesis, apuntes, datos."

--Heriberto Yépez

"Apocryphal Lorca, sin embargo, es mucho más que un estudio de las vidas posteriores de Lorca en la poesía americana entre principios de los años 50 y 70. También ofrece un acercamiento histórico a la traducción de su obra, descubriendo reseñas de prensa significativas y discurriendo acerca de reconocimientos críticos. El texto es elegante y fresco; el análisis amplio e históricamente específico."

--María Delgado, Revista de Literatura

¡Bemsha SWING!

10 sept 2005

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