The Impasse of the Book Review

The following is way more fun to read than the title indicates. -- PRSC.

Sooo, yah ... there's this review? I'm working on? for Big HUMs Journal on spiffing new anthology concerning the work of a misunderstood and too long ignored and generally kick ass twentieth century feminist writer?

Surprising? Ehhh, no.

Surprising is my overall reaction to the book: perfect, earnest ambivalence. Like Pong when the "paddles" get very close together, precisely parallel, and the "ball" blurs. Remember that? How it was "like" ping-pong?

Much to laud, much to excoriate --

most of the latter having to do with my position vis. the limits of old school liberalism, and the general thrust of the book which is that Fabulous Feminist was, literarily, Everything (yes, Spock eyebrows everyone) : Modernist who adored tradition (separated herself from Bloomsbury and Eliot), hijaked Wilde's style but suspected Aestheticism (of a soft sort of threatening decadence, if you get my meaning), experimentalist who held to realism (whatever that means), promoter of feminine independence and intelligence and artistry and so forth who also thought that pretty china was important (not in itself bad), proto-postmodernist who out does and therefore transcends the postmodernists (totally did not fly, that thesis). This only one facet of her career as a writer and public intellectual. Which means: inchoate, incoherent, undecidable, and not in that cool rhizomatic genre blending way. Contributors embrace post-structural readings, the editor shrugs off post-structuralism. Where, really, are we?

This is not entirely the fault of the contributors or editor: it is really the difficulty of this particular writer. She was more or less all over the map. Her politics and principles led her here and there, and sometimes here and there don't belong in the same brain. Is this a woman writing her way through the process and changes of her life engaged with the last century? Yes. Is that good for us to see? Yes. Does it makes sense vis. the last century that her work might not add up to a coherent whole? Oh, yes. ------ But, the anthology wants to make a whole, a smooth narrative, a pretty package, out of this contradictory process of a career. Again, everything dissolves to nothing before my readerly eyeballs. Which, the anthology chooses to describe as an important and compelling challenge to the current academic methodologies and biases. Maybe/not. Many things about the organization and institutional nature of the Humanities bare reconsideration and structural revolution, but just on behalf of one writer, just to get her in the classrooms, just one? Rather too fanatic for me. Why this woman and not, say, _____(insert complex misunderstood feminist writer here)_____?

I want to sing praises. I am utterly unconvinced of this praise. Why do I want to? Because this Fab Feminist is, for all her human contradictions (many of them the contradictions of the last century and the limits of old school Liberalism), an awesome model for women and writers for being One Who Cuts Their Own Path While Pulling No Punches -- and the price one (will) may well pay for doing so, which we need. A woman Don Quixote figure, and oh how I always want to champion the Quixotes of the world. More, we need this model iconoclast for another reason that makes my ambivalence perfect:

The book argues that FF should be considered In Our Moment Because She Is Relevant, and yet, for all the good writing, thorough research, edifying critical work, not to mention the editor's willingness to include readings that do no really jive with his own, and the general rock solidity of the book as a critical anthology --

we are beyond the moment the contributors think they are in.

And just how FF would help us to imagine our way out of the Entertaining Panopticon is, well, never addressed. Other than to say that she was a Humanist, which is not to say anything revolutionarily useful In This Moment. We need more than that.

A point which may verily Not belong in this particular book review.

We are no longer at that crossroads where an "informed" liberal humanism will be enough. The Representatives of Tradition and Apple Pie read their post-structuralists, took note that these simulacra, these ideological and repressive apparati, that what we once quaintly called newsspeak, could, in fact, in a total media environment, replace reality (or just enough of it) -- as the post-structuralists tried to WARN US was happening -- and they went for it. Lately it's been all Politics by Public Relations. Dinosaurs on Noah's Ark in some museum in Kentucky (because if you put it in a museum, it's True), and a Clean Air Act written by Big Polluting Energy's lackeys. You know. You watched it. Thus, miring us in a postmodern condition of late capitalism so recursively imbricated, so representational, so thick and total and un-real but simultaneously tremendously damaging, that I fear all appeals of the kind this books makes are simply naive. Earnest, well meant, beautifully written (really, readable), and naive.

And yet, we need more such engaged public intellectuals and pullers of no punches calling out the Death Culture for what it is and building the Life Culture out of the potent alchemy of the beauty of our traditions best pulsions, the critical knowledge of our tradition's repressions (both meanings), and the cautious certainty that because we can imagine better, and because history itself shows that change is possible (if not always "progress"), that more such iconoclasts and polymaths really should bloody well get on the stick. Such types, incubating out there, watching, learning, they could use the lessons of this woman's career and reception. It would be fortifying.

A point which may not belong in This Particular book review. ---- But which I very, very much want to make nonethegoddamnless.

And then there's the Acadmiverse's power dynamics in which I am Unknown and getting a nice juicy review article for my vita in V.I. Hums Journal, and everyone else in this transaction has a job, an established scholarly record, and whatnot, probably tenure too. Do I want to pick a fight? No/Yes. I do/n't.

Yes: because something importantly not-quite-right is going on here. No: because I don't believe in making my bones at others' expense, and having this particular fight is also behind our moment.

So, there I am. Conceptual/Political/Practical Impasse. Writing the review anyway, because I need it, because the book is, as an anthology, a good project with many smart bits, because it was a work of love and rigor (mostly) which I respect (moslty) ---- cringing. And I don't even give credence to such impasses.