[ilds] Mustapha Marrouchi and Lawrence Durrell

[James Gifford]

Hi Bruce,

On 2015-12-30 11:23 AM, Bruce Redwine wrote:
> I stand by, however, my contention that plagiarism
> is part and parcel of a bigger aspect of Durrell’s
> personality.

I understand what you mean by this, though I think we'd disagree on some 
of the shades of meaning in "multiple" vs. "protean" identity and truth. 
  The prevalence of fragmentation among the high moderns shapes, I'd 
argue, Durrell's sense of "truth" in the singular; contingency and 
limitedness are rampant in the Quartet in a way that resolving those 
conflicted perspectives would undo.  Likewise, I tend to focus on 
Durrell's comments on identity or "personality" (I'm thinking of the 
"personality is a box with a lid but without any sides" quip in one 
interview) as emphasizing the force of containment by the box rather 
than the absence of any such thing as personality within it.  While 
characters become one another, overtly in the Quintet and 
methodologically in the composition of the Quartet, I tend to regard 
this as emphasizing relational values that the sides of the box would 
block off artificially from others rather than the absence of identity 
in any form at all.  Identity may be relational and protean, but that 
doesn't mean it doesn't exist in some sense and that one cannot be 
self-possessed.  Robert Duncan describes this as the authoritarian 
element of the superego trying to fix identity in place rather than 
observing where it goes.  Likewise, the profusion of truths marks out 
relations among subject positions rather than their emptiness.  In the 
same sense, the vanishing footprints in the desert sands (in the 
Quartet) doesn't mean that no feet were ever there, merely that they're 
still moving and are not the same as they were, shedding ephemeral 
footprints in the process rather than standing still.

That said, those are my own emphases, and your certainly right about the 
darkness in Durrell as well.

> I recall one of my professors saying that most of
> what was being published was worthless, trash.  Of
> course, that didn’t stop him from publishing and
> contributing to the problem.  I have to confess
> that I like reading scholarship, even when I
> vehemently disagree with the academic, as I do
> with Edward W. Said.

I'd add that vehement disagreement can also be productive when it's 
combined with respect for difference.  I've recently read a friend's 
book (/The Extinct Scene/ by Davis), and while we work on very similar 
things (often the same things), we have opposing interpretive projects 
and contradictory methodologies -- I'd have to say I disagree deeply, 
yet I like his book very much, entirely enjoyed reading it, and would 
not hesitate to recommend it or suggest it for students.

As for the problem of publication, it's most definitely not limited to 
the Humanities.  If anything, the Humanities show much more efficiency 
than other fields where the retraction of publications seems to be 
ever-increasing.  A part of "professionalization" today is the pressure 
to publish one's dissertation, so much so that many now publish the 
dissertation while on the job market in order to compete effectively.  I 
review a lot of books, both in print and in blind review, and some books 
that just don't need to exist do sneak their way into good presses, but 
they are without doubt more prevalent with some publishers than others. 
  We're somewhat shielded in Canada where the Aid to Scholarly 
Publishing Program promotes two rounds of peer review, one for 
acceptance and a second independent of the press for funding -- since 
books with funding are more desirable for the non-profit presses, that 
process tends to reduce "in-group" bias and such, even if it means 
slower production and lower acceptance rates.

At the same time, when asked by colleagues who are in the tenure 
process, I now bluntly suggest they get a book out, good, bad, or 
indifferent.  For their own stability, it gives an assurance in that 
fraught and largely unequal process, even if no one ever reads a word of 
it.  For what it's worth, I took the harder path and wrote a new book 
before tenure, and to make it worse, I ran contrary to the fashion in my 
area of the discipline (risking some nastiness) -- the second monograph 
(winding its way through review now) did the same.  Who knows how that 
will go, but I have the relative stability of tenure on which to take 
those risks.  Not everyone does, which is why some publish the 
dissertation as articles, republish it again as a book, go up for tenure 
and never write a word again...  Committees don't always actually read 
the material to find those things out.

There's also at least a few academic books a year that I read with deep 
pleasure in the writing and thoughts.

All best,
James