The Literary Bent: In Search of High Art in Contemporary American Writing

by James D. Bloom

Overview

What is "literature in these postmodern, postcanonical times? And if a small number of works being written today are "literary," what distinguishes them from those many others that are not? The store managers who shelve books in separate "literature" and "fiction" sections clearly have something in mind, but they're not talking. James Bloom has his own ideas, and he is.

With zest and conviction, Bloom argues that traditional aspirations to literariness persist in the poetry and fiction of writers such as Robert Stone, Jane Smiley, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, and Robert Pinsky. All, in their various ways, exhibit a critical and playful awareness of their literary antecedents, display and resist the seductions of eloquence, arouse and discipline their readers' curiosity. Bloom deftly shows how their writings negotiate with the nonliterary media that dominate our culture, even as the cultural capital of canonical authors like Shakespeare and Keats is put to work on the pages of mail-order catalogs and the New York Times, on network television, and in the products of the Disney conglomerate.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780812215984
Publisher:	University of Pennsylvania Press, Inc.
Publication date:	02/01/1997
Series:	Penn Studies in Contemporary American Fiction
Pages:	192
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.53(d)

About the Author

James D. Bloom is Associate Professor of English and Director of American Studies at Muhlenberg College. He is author of The Stock of Available Reality and Left Letters: The Culture Wars of Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman.

Editorial Reviews

"While most of the smart-alecs in the humanities have been hacking away at literary culture (which is to say, 'deconstructing' it with a vengeance), James Bloom has been reading, reading, reading-and now he has constructed a singularly thoughtful and important synthesis of old and new ways of looking at serious literature and its role in everyday life. His book stands as one of the most valuable contributions to literary criticism in recent years."

Alan Cheuse

"Bloom does not so much present a defense of literariness as enact one. The variety of his illustrations and the breathless pace of his prose make an apocalyptic case for the value of cultural literacy in a postliterate culture. In reading, one feels an intimacy with and fondness for Bloom as someone totally immersed in both popular and high culture and committed to making sense of both, without belittling either."

David Van Leer

There's little camaraderie to be found at the uncomfortable juncture of contemporary literature and contemporary literary theory. It seems poets and fiction writers simply can't produce important new works of art at the same pace at which their theorist peers can dismantle what used to be called the canon. Bloom, who teaches English at Muhlenberg College and is the author of Left Letters: The Culture Wars of Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman, is a scholar of unlikely sympathies and insights. He chooses not to judge the academy's recent distrust of Shakespeare and tradition. Instead, he turns the curious reader's attention to the work of contemporary American writers as disparate as Robert Stone, Tony Morrison and John Ashbery, to demonstrate that despite overwhelming critical and public apathy, current poetry and literary fiction continue to revere a worthwhile (and still considerably healthy) literary tradition. Stone's Children of Light is Bloom's chief example, but his reading reaches from the Romantics to yesterday's New York Times. At the same time Bloom admits that the literary canon he loves is up against the wall, he reminds us all that literariness is continuing to experience a boom as "cultural capital." Dejected writers and readers need merely return to their adored classics to cash in on Bloom's investment. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

"While most of the smart-alecs in the humanities have been hacking away at literary culture (which is to say, 'deconstructing' it with a vengeance), James Bloom has been reading, reading, reading—and now he has constructed a singularly thoughtful and important synthesis of old and new ways of looking at serious literature and its role in everyday life. His book stands as one of the most valuable contributions to literary criticism in recent years."—Alan Cheuse, book reviewer, NPR's All Things Considered

"Bloom does not so much present a defense of literariness as enact one. The variety of his illustrations and the breathless pace of his prose make an apocalyptic case for the value of cultural literacy in a postliterate culture. In reading, one feels an intimacy with and fondness for Bloom as someone totally immersed in both popular and high culture and committed to making sense of both, without belittling either."—David Van Leer, University of California, Riverside

From the Publisher