Rochelle's+CAP

__** Main Ideas **__ In [|“The Latest World,” Curtis White]claims that his previously published essay, [|“The Late World,”] was misunderstood. White believes that his readers have read his essay as simply a critique of the way in which our postmodernist (yet still highly capitalistic) society—its publishers, agents, websites (Amazon.com), educational institutions—have failed to define literature for us and thus rescue us from the facile, the middlebrow.

Yet White argues that his essay moves beyond the idea that literature with a capital “L” has been lost.[| Capital "L" Literature], White explains, through its unique ability to get us at the [|Lacanian idea of “the Real"] (our natural, pre-language state) has always alienated and destabalized; still the literary canon, through its organization of “the major, the minor, and the non-canoncial” has “served the opposite purpose: to stabilize.”

In essence, White believes the canon has “stabilized” writers who were most subversive by turning them into fossils. Writers such as[| Keats] or [|Wallace Stevens] force us to reexamine everyday objects beyond “the crust of habitual expectation”; they create the kind of art that alienates us and pushes us to examine our lives, while the Web creates a pleasurable but empty “high-tech echo chamber” that does nothing less than reinforce the “reassuring sound of our own voice.”

White’s critique is less a polemic against the death of literary quality, than a diatribe on the ways in which this excellence has been lost: for White, a [|postmodernist, digital] environment means artists have lost the ability to create subversive art that provokes, challenges, and innovates.



__** Commentary **__ White writes, “[o]ne of the things that has been most discouraging to me in recent years is the tendency among some of my readers to substitute familiar ideas for the unfamiliar ideas that I’m actually trying to develop.”

But are White’s ideas truly original/unfamiliar or is he simply another part of “the happy servomechanism”?

[|Adorno] stated (and far more thoughtfully) White’s “unfamiliar idea” that the “products of mass culture are successfully ‘passing for art’”

And White’s idea that “any canon can only serve…to stabilize” and function as an ideological apparatus is derived from [|Althusser].

Yet far more problematic than White’ self-congratulatory tone—and subsequent narcissism—is the way in which White romanticizes the artist. White believes the writer to always be subversive and show “indifference to what the critics and canonizers think.”

Still, the argument White presents in support of this view is disingenuous at best.

For example, it is noteworthy that in an essay about the “literary canon,” White must turn to music, for [|Chaucer] and[| Shakespeare], who serve as the foundation of the English literary canon, were highly concerned with supporting the patrons who allowed them to create art.

Far more troubling is White’s oddly ahistorical discussion of Keats, who was highly concerned with his reputation. Keats’s famous tombstone inscription means that he had least considered the way his work would be viewed after his death. Furthermore, [|John Banard’s “First Fruits or 'First Blights': A New Account of the Publishing History of Keats's Poems (1817)]” describes how Keats bitterly described the failure of his first book to sell (he termed this first book “first-blights”). Furthermore, because in the Romantic time “[p]ublishing on commission was a common and, indeed, the normal way for an unknown author to appear before the public,” some of Keats's books were not released for financial reasons. Keats then switched publishers and the way in which he published his work in order to make sure the world saw his poetry (Banard 71-76). <--I realize after re-reading the article that White's view of Keats's career is similar to my own. Curtis writes that "of the Romantic poets, Keats was most keenly aware of this difficulty," and by "difficulty," I believe White means the difficulty of creating art without regard to what others, especially the important tastemakers, think of it.

White’s essay thus creates the false dichotomy that one cannot create challenging art unless the artist remains indifferent to material needs. Still, [|Virginia Woolf’s remarks] that writers need not only a room of one’s own but also a certain amount of financial freedom to create ring true. (We all know the tragedy of [|Zora Neale Hurston], but think of all the writers and artists [|whose names we do not know], whose voices will not be shared, because they lacked access to the financial and educational institutions that could have supported them. ) In fact, if we look at the canonical, “ossified” writers that White alludes to in his essay, we see the extent of this logical flaw. <--I still believe White's argument is flawed, but now I think it is flawed not because of his argument that the artist be agnostic to his/her popularity but because he sees the Web as a recursive feedback loop of approval, which it, in fact, is not. The beginning of his own essay, in which White complains about how he felt some readers misread his essay, suggests that the Web offers more than just approval and "like." What the Web does is speed up people's ability to respond to a text--and most texts will have their share of supporters and detractors.

[|Spenser’s Faerie Queene] flattered his patron Queen Elizabeth, yet its allusions to destabilized gender identity (e.g., Britomart and Malocasta), its glorification of the pastoral, and its erotic undertones serve to question and critique the monarchy.

[|Walt Whitman’s self-published Leaves of Grass]has been called a work of “egoism” by at least one reader (Gohdes 79) yet we also see this collection as celebrating the spirit of American life.

Chaucer worked for the nobles, including the king, almost all his life but in //The Canterbury Tales// his satire of the bourgeois remains sharp.

And the great Shakespeare? The folios most likely wouldn’t exist had his plays not have been so incredibly commercially successful.

Finally, there’s no small amount of irony in that White’s essay is published [|Lapham’s Quarterly], a website that invites select scholars and writers to appear on its pages. In this way, White implicitly upholds both the digital world and literary canon which he presumes to attack (even as he very quickly dismisses his own ventures into Facebook account, blogging, and website). And so as someone who will proudly blog, post, tweet, and sell her book for “.99 on Kindle,” I don’t feel bad at all. I know I’m in conversation with—and in a tradition of—writers who believe they have something to say and will do their damnest to try to say it. **<**--I apologize for this part of my argument. It lacked a critical voice and dissolved into an ad hominem attack against White. It wasn't my attention to be intellectually dishonest, but I felt strongly about this topic, for obvious reasons.

Banard, John. “First Fruits or 'First Blights': A New Account of the Publishing History of Keats's //Poems// (1817).” //Romanticism// 12.2 (2006): 71-101.

Gohdes, Clarence. L.F. “Whitman and Emerson.” //Sewanee Review// 37.1 (1929): 79-93.

__** For Discussion **__ 1) Does White spend enough reflecting on his own dependence on the “happy servomechanism”? Should he have said more or less about his own experiences with blogging and social networking?

2) How do you see the digital literature we’ve read in class as tying in with this discussion? Is the digital literature too commercial? Is it ever challenging or subversive? Or is too self-involved and compromising?