At Prospect David Wolf continues his interesting 'Critical thinking'-series of Q & As 'about the art of criticism' -- this time with Daniel Mendelsohn.
As readers might recall, just three weeks ago I took issue, at some length, with Mendelsohn writing in a 'Bookends'-column in The New York Times Book Review about how vital he felt it was for the critic to consider any particular book very much in the context of the author's entire body of work (whereas my strong preference is to focus on the work at hand and ignore, as far as possible, the hand behind it).
He's at it here again:
I get that it's hard to look at the new (or old) Philip Roth without considering/seeing/being blinded by all the other Roths; hell, I've just read Patrick White's debut, Happy Valley (review to follow soon) and it was incredibly difficult not to constantly consider it in the larger White-context.
Nevertheless, I still maintain a book-by-book approach is, in almost all cases far more useful. And I regret that Wolf didn't force the issue a bit, as Mendelsohn gave him a nice opening, mentioning his The New York Review of Books-review (not freely accessible online) of The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. Not much discussion there by Mendelsohn of Littell's first book, Bad Voltage, or how Littell had moved on (including to a whole new language !) with The Kindly Ones.
Maybe Bad Voltage is, for some reason, simply negligible and doesn't have to be counted or considered -- not-quite-juvenilia ? a young author trying to find his literary niche ? Who knows ? I don't, but then that's because I prefer considering the book under discussion on its own terms -- as, in the case of The Kindly Ones, Mendelsohn did too.
Any future literary historian/biographer/scholarly critic of Littell will surely also take Bad Voltage into account re. any reading of The Kindly Ones -- but I imagine there's other extraneous matter that must also be considered (and likely offers more useful insight). Littell's time in the Caucasus is perhaps the most obvious, in leaving its traces in the book -- though I, for one, would imagine his father Robert Littell's writing is more significant than, for example, his own Bad Voltage and I'm surprised there hasn't been more rooting around in that.
Reading the Patrick White has been instructive, in many ways. Here's an author whose work I am very familiar with -- practically all of it -- and one way of reading it would have been to just look for clues to his future work here. Maybe something for the biographer or literary historian, but not me ..... Indeed, if we're considering context, it seems more useful to look at Happy Valley as a product of its times, rather than a product specifically of his, the influences (both the who and the what) -- Joyce, Stein, even Dos Passos -- more intriguing than considering, for eample, how specifically White moved on from here in his later work.
(In his 'Bookends'-column Mendelsohn suggests Donna Tartt as an author whose evolution reviews should chronicle and consider (yawn) -- but surely there's an argument for seeing both The Secret History and The Goldfinch in the contexts of their time -- not with respect to what else she has written, but rather what others are writing, and specifically what the world at large at those times looks like (especially given the roughly decade-long intervals between books): it seems far more interesting (to me) to consider The Goldfinch, with its strange slice of New York -- a sort of timeless version of the city that's barely recognizable as any version of the actual one in its broad outlines and yet nails so many specifics well -- in this respect than considering, for example, how Tartt's use of young-kid-protagonists has (or rather: hasn't) evolved from book to book.)
As readers might recall, just three weeks ago I took issue, at some length, with Mendelsohn writing in a 'Bookends'-column in The New York Times Book Review about how vital he felt it was for the critic to consider any particular book very much in the context of the author's entire body of work (whereas my strong preference is to focus on the work at hand and ignore, as far as possible, the hand behind it).
He's at it here again:
I still think it's imperative, even if you're a weekly critic, to do more than read the book in question. It's still inconceivable to me for anybody, including a newspaper critic with a weekly beat, not to read the other works by an author. It's just irresponsible not to do that because you're failing to do your job, which is to make things interesting and coherent for your reader. If you haven't read the author's other books, you don't know if the book that you're reviewing represents an evolution, an improvement or whatever.Quite honestly, I continue to be baffled by this. Yes, the literary biographer or historian, and arguably even some practitioners of literary criticism have some reason to go in for this sort of thing -- but not, I'd suggest, 'simple' book reviewers (i.e. those who write reviews for publications aimed at a more or less general audience -- from the complete review to The New York Review of Books).
I get that it's hard to look at the new (or old) Philip Roth without considering/seeing/being blinded by all the other Roths; hell, I've just read Patrick White's debut, Happy Valley (review to follow soon) and it was incredibly difficult not to constantly consider it in the larger White-context.
Nevertheless, I still maintain a book-by-book approach is, in almost all cases far more useful. And I regret that Wolf didn't force the issue a bit, as Mendelsohn gave him a nice opening, mentioning his The New York Review of Books-review (not freely accessible online) of The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell. Not much discussion there by Mendelsohn of Littell's first book, Bad Voltage, or how Littell had moved on (including to a whole new language !) with The Kindly Ones.
Maybe Bad Voltage is, for some reason, simply negligible and doesn't have to be counted or considered -- not-quite-juvenilia ? a young author trying to find his literary niche ? Who knows ? I don't, but then that's because I prefer considering the book under discussion on its own terms -- as, in the case of The Kindly Ones, Mendelsohn did too.
Any future literary historian/biographer/scholarly critic of Littell will surely also take Bad Voltage into account re. any reading of The Kindly Ones -- but I imagine there's other extraneous matter that must also be considered (and likely offers more useful insight). Littell's time in the Caucasus is perhaps the most obvious, in leaving its traces in the book -- though I, for one, would imagine his father Robert Littell's writing is more significant than, for example, his own Bad Voltage and I'm surprised there hasn't been more rooting around in that.
Reading the Patrick White has been instructive, in many ways. Here's an author whose work I am very familiar with -- practically all of it -- and one way of reading it would have been to just look for clues to his future work here. Maybe something for the biographer or literary historian, but not me ..... Indeed, if we're considering context, it seems more useful to look at Happy Valley as a product of its times, rather than a product specifically of his, the influences (both the who and the what) -- Joyce, Stein, even Dos Passos -- more intriguing than considering, for eample, how specifically White moved on from here in his later work.
(In his 'Bookends'-column Mendelsohn suggests Donna Tartt as an author whose evolution reviews should chronicle and consider (yawn) -- but surely there's an argument for seeing both The Secret History and The Goldfinch in the contexts of their time -- not with respect to what else she has written, but rather what others are writing, and specifically what the world at large at those times looks like (especially given the roughly decade-long intervals between books): it seems far more interesting (to me) to consider The Goldfinch, with its strange slice of New York -- a sort of timeless version of the city that's barely recognizable as any version of the actual one in its broad outlines and yet nails so many specifics well -- in this respect than considering, for example, how Tartt's use of young-kid-protagonists has (or rather: hasn't) evolved from book to book.)