[ilds] durrell & kitsch

[Marc Piel]

The word kitch is considered derogatory, denoting 
works executed to pander to popular demand alone 
and purely for commercial purposes rather than 
works created as self-expression by an artist (or 
professor). I invite everyone to reread this post 
  carefully and see what a huge quantity of kitch 
there is in this post from Bruce.
Marc

Bruce Redwine a écrit :
> Sure, Charles.  First, thanks for the excerpt from Marcus's analysis of 
> Seymour Glass.  I like it.  Here's my take on what Marcus means by 
> calling Pursewarden a "kitsch genius."  A little background.  Steven 
> Marcus was a colleague of Edward Said at Columbia, both professors. 
>  You'll recall Said's comment on Durrell, previously discussed on this 
> List.  Said dismissed Durrell as a writer of "classy fiction" /(The 
> World, the Text, and the Critic/ [Cambridge 1983], 3).  He tells the 
> anecdote of going to the Pentagon and talking to a college friend 
> working in DOD (Said graduated from Princeton and Harvard).  This is 
> during the Vietnam War, and Said wants to understand the type of people 
> bombing the North.  The friend defends his boss and says McNamara, 
> Secretary of Defense, has the /Quartet/ on his desk, ergo the Secretary 
> is an intellectual and no monster.  Said scoffs at the equation.  I 
> assume Marcus and Said exchanged ideas often, and I take "kitsch" and 
> "classy" as being synonymous.  I would use the word pretentious in this 
> context, for I'm rather fond of "kitsch," so long as you know what 
> you're dealing with.  Yes, kitsch does apply to the /Quartet,/ 
> "marvelously" so, as you note, and yes, I agree, Marcus's usage is 
> entirely negative.
> 
> I think Marcus is primarily talking about a failure in presentation. 
>  Seymour fails as a character because he doesn't live up to his billing. 
>  Salinger spends a lot of energy building up this character, making him 
> mysterious, creating an aura of sainthood.  When Seymour shows up, 
> however, he's a letdown, a flop, something of a "phony," as Holden 
> Caulfield might say.  This may be what Marcus means, and this sense of 
> kitsch can be extended to Durrell's characterization of Pursewarden, 
> whose great reputation as the caustic author of /God Is a Humorist/ is 
> intriguing but whose occasional pronouncements on art and life grow 
> tiresome and pretentious.  Durrell's best solution for Pursewarden was 
> to have him commit suicide in /Balthazar,/ like Seymour's suicide in "A 
> Perfect Day for Bananafish."  Unfortunately, Durrell later resurrected 
> Ludwig in /Clea,/ where we learn too much about his "genius" from a 
> section of his notebooks, where he sounds like Durrell himself 
> delivering his opinions on the course of English literature.
> 
> True, Durrell and Miller had a program for reforming English literature, 
> but are we to take this seriously?  Highbrow (bad) vs. lowbrow (good)? 
>  English priggishness (bad) vs. French earthiness (good)?  High Moderns 
> (bad) vs. Jacobeans (good).  Joyce (bad) vs. Rabelais (good)?  Are we to 
> discount Joyce and Pound because they knew their classics?  Durrell 
> scoffs at Joyce because he went back to /The Odyssey/ to seek a new form 
> /(Paris Review/ 1960).  In that interview in /PR,/ Durrell talks a lot 
> about art and literature.  Does the average Frenchman really appreciate, 
> in a way an Englishman can't, a good Camembert as much as he (or she) 
> does a Picasso?  Have the French really integrated art and everyday 
> living?  I don't know, but I doubt it.  All this talk sounds "classy" 
> and "kitschy" to me, something fundamentally false.  Which brings us 
> back to our discussions about Durrell the "wise" sage.
> 
> 
> Bruce
> 
> 
> On Jan 29, 2010, at 6:48 AM, Charles Sligh wrote:
> 
>> A last observation:
>>
>> I think that Steven Marcus hands down the "kitsch" verdict as a negative.
>>
>> Durrell (and Miller &c.) are not "highbrow" on the order to Joyce,
>> Woolf, and the various American Equivalents of the High Moderns.
>>
>> But does that Marcus verdict really tell us anything new--especially
>> when from early on Miller and Durrell are aligning themselves in
>> opposition to the "high" modern line?
>>
>> The /Justine/ phenom (perfume line and movie) is marvelously kitsch. And
>> Durrell writes his "Minor Mythologies" essay in order to break down the
>> dividing lines between high and low literary art.
>>
>> C&c.
>>
>> ***
>>
>> Charles Sligh wrote:
>>> I wonder what Durrell would make of the term "kitsch"?
>>>
>>> I find one instance of the word in his writings:
>>>
>>>    "In Miller you have someone who has crossed the dividing line
>>>    between art and /Kitsch/ once and for all" (/The Happy Rock/ 3).
>>>
>>>
>>> But what does that sentence mean?
>>>
>>> Based on the matter of the previous sentence and word order, does Miller
>>> leave art (Hemingway, Dos Passos, and Faulkner) and plunge forward with
>>> fearless gusto into "Kitsch"?
>>>
>>> Is that a good thing here?
>>>
>>> By the evidence of the first /Tropic/, I am supposing that it /is/ a
>>> good thing--no more tea cups and doilies and polite library lectures by
>>> professors discussing James Joyce and Virginia Woolf for Miller and his
>>> readers. . . .
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>> ********************************************
>> Charles L. Sligh
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of English
>> University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
>> charles-sligh at utc.edu <mailto:charles-sligh at utc.edu>
>> ********************************************
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> _______________________________________________
> ILDS mailing list
> ILDS at lists.uvic.ca
> https://lists.uvic.ca/mailman/listinfo/ilds