I love insight and brilliance, and I deplore tedium and lack of imagination. So when I turned to Morris Dickstein’s article about a resurgent interest in actual history (as opposed to that naughty theory), to which Tom Matrullo points, I winced to observe Dickstein casually ascribing qualitative characteristics to literary methods and approaches — as though a bright interpreter might not write well about Edna St. Vincent Millay from a feminist, or deconstructive, or old historicist, or New Historicist approach. (I do feel a little sorry that old historicists don’t get upper-case initials.)
News flash: Turgid critics abounded in the good ol’ pre-“theoretical” days. No news: Plenty of post-structuralist theoreticians write badly. Conclusion, so far as I can tell: in criticism as in any field of literary endeavor, gifted writers appear to us less often than do dull writers.
Moreover, brilliant writers often see so clearly the points to which they call our attention that they have a hard time tolerating other scholars’ perspectives — especially when those other scholars are dull, or are themselves brilliant.
May we please let go of the shopworn premise that “all feminists are ideologues and poor readers,” or “all historicists are tedious fuddy-duddies,” or “all queer theorists flagrantly defy both history and common sense,” or any generalization about critical approaches (especially when these sling the mud of the epigones onto the brilliance of pre-eminent practitioners)?
Now I must go finish the article, then read what the Tutor and Joseph say about it. They both point to Waggish.
Posted by AKMA at May 24, 2003 08:18 AM | TrackBack