¡Bemsha SWING!

25 may 2006

I need your help. Give me a "critical problem" in the comment boxes below or by email if you aren't a blogger blogger. A critical problem is something that bothers you when you read, a discrepancy or contradiction, a paradox. Something that would be a good start for a critical essay. I have my own examples, but I'm afraid they might bear too strongly the marks of my own idiosyncracy. I want to impress on my students the necessity for starting with a critical problem when they write.

2 comentarios:

Ray Davis dijo...: I pretty much only write criticism to scratch an itch, which is why I can't review worth a damn.

My recent essays on genre have tended to start with "Why does what this critic say bother me when what this other critic said, which seems similar, didn't bother me?"

Latest long critical essay: "I don't find any of the existing stories about Dickinson's variants as satsifying as the variants themselves. Can I find another story?"

The one before that: "Why do intelligent humanists insist on so blatantly misapplying biological evolution?"

The one before that: "Why could I not stop reading Lou Andreas-Salome even though I was getting thoroughly sick of her?"

Before that: "Why did I not trust 'Toy Story' as much as 'The Steadfast Tin Soldier'?"

My two favorite long critical essays: "In what non-racist sense is Elvis Presley the King?" "Why do I find Ernst Lubitsch's last movie so moving?"

Hmm. Apparently, what incites me most often is not a puzzle in the singular work or idea, but a puzzle in the discourse surrounding a work or idea. No wonder I comment on blogs. But the foundational puzzle behind _all_ the writing I've tried, including fiction, is "Why can't my mind let go of this?"; 4:40 p. m.
Jonathan dijo...: That's exactly what I was talking about, "the puzzle in the discourse surrounding a work or idea." It takes a long time for grad students to get to that level of sophistication where they understand the traditions of thought behind the criticism.

The Dickinson example is perfect, thanks for that one.; 6:07 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!

25 may 2006

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