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ON_THE_SCHOLES_OF_PARADOXY
April 10, 2014
April 11, 2014
Robert Scholes in his "Paradoxy of Modernism",
speaks up in defense of the low arts in
response to some various snobby attacks from Yale University
critics writing early in the 20th century. Press (2006)
That title, "Paradoxy of
Modernism", strikes me as a
bid towards critical
seriousness (even as he
defends the commoners)-- I
can't say I quite get what
paradoxes he's referring to,
though he does have a finger
on a few contradictions. But then, if you're going
A more accurate title would to ship a hardcover with
be "Confusions" or even an academic press at $50
"Hypocrisies". plus, you need to work to
justify that.
Scholes suggestion that the
modernist critics "protest Myself, I will pass
too much" is interesting: he on buying this one, And I begin
accuses them of secretly living with the with a PDF
enjoying the low arts, but various free PDF of the
feeling ashamed of it. samples-- first 12
pages...
Ah, Alan Blackstock, of Utah But I'll keep it in
State University explains: mind as a Nook book FIRST13
experiment at $16--
"Scholes begins by defining (while I own a Nook,
"paradoxy"-- a word he evidently I've yet to buy one
coined-- as 'a kind of confusion of their DRM
generated by a terminology that encumbered ebooks).
seems to make clear distinctions
where clear distinctions cannot--
and should not-- be made'"
http://rmmla.innoved.org/ereview/60.2/reviews/blackstock.asp
There's some good stuff in Scholes work,
like this remark on the continuum of novelty:
"There is undoubtedly a sliding scale between the
highly formulaic (call it mechanical) and the
highly original in aesthetic texts, but the
absolute ends of the scale are impossible to
occupy, since they would yield no new text at NOVELTY_AGAIN
one end and an unintelligible text at the other."
-- p.10
About Lukás, "Theory of the Novel" (1914-15):
"The novel, he asserted, unlike other literary
genres, was cursed by having an evil twin: 'a
caricatural twin almost indistinguishable from
itself in all inessential formal characteristics:
the entertainment novel, which has all the outward
features of the novel but which, in essence, is
bound to nothing and based on nothing, i.e. is
essentially meaningless.'"
Scholes makes the obvious point-- obvious to me,
at least, and probably obvious to most of us at
this point-- that this duality isn't supportable.
Scholes comments "Lukás
wanted the novel to do serious It's easy at this date to dismiss as
cultural work, which meant, for naive and dated the notion that the
him, a Hegelian project -- " world needs the New Socialist Novel,
but there was a time when such novels
Scholes argues that all *did* serve serious purposes --
narrative is essentially
entertaining-- but misses A famous example would be the
the point that all narrative Upton Sinclair novel "The Jungle"
is also essentially serious. (1906).
Scholes quotes Martin Greenberg, from
the essay "Avant-garde and Kitsch":
CRITICAL_TIME
"Kitsch is the epitome of all that is spurious
in the life of our times. Kitsch pretends to
demand nothing of its customers except
their money-- not even their time."
Scholes counters that filling time is
a primary function of Kitsch-- but
this is nit-picking, attacking
Greenberg's attempt at a play on
words without going after it's actual
meaning: Here Greenberg clearly means
it doesn't take *much* time (or
rather, effort) to access Kitsch--
And for the connoisseur of cheapshots this
volley by Scholes is quite impressive:
"I would thus distinguish between
works that attempt to pass
themselves off as high art by aping At the outset, no one knows
the superficial signs of superior whether a particular work will
achievement-- true kitsch, if you be a masterpiece, not even the
will-- and works that decline the master. The "masterpiece
masterpiece gambit and aim at a gambit" may be a useful, even
lower but genuine level of artistic a necessary move for producing
production-- " a certain kind of work.
--p.12
The thing to attack here
is not the imitation of
form, but the pretence
that this isn't what's
being done.
The worst thing here, from my point
of view, is that Scholes appears to
be buying into the Modernist's low He comes not to elevate
opinion of popular art: the popular novel, but
to drag all down to the
"'Fun,' of course, is a word that same level.
trivializes the pleasure to be obtained
by works labeled kitsch, but the notion
of a kind of existential boredom, a fear
of the meaninglessness of a life without
hope for human progress or a heavenly
reward, is far from trivial."
My contention would be that popular art
is not merely a refuge to hide from that
meaninglessness-- it's a solution to it,
it provides a frame of meaning, a way of
approaching the world. The fundamental The silliest comedy,
subject of fiction is how to live, and the most formulaic
how to feel about living... fantasy, still has
this aspect in play.
TAKEN_LIGHTLY
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