freecounterpoint: AA's Heartthrob

Thursday, November 15, 2007

AA's Heartthrob

6 comments:

Tecumseh said...: JJ: Why the dig at AA? I never heard him praise the Hildebeast.

there's definitely something weird and cultish in the sycophantish cathexis onto Hillary of the many nerds, geeks and vengeful viragos who run her campaign

A jolly crowd. Up Pepe's alley, no?; 11/15/2007 8:02 AM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Politics aside, Camille Paglia would be wise to return to Intro to Prose, 101 at whatever English/Journalistic program she once attended. This is shit writing.

Something that B.R. Myers exposes with precision. Take this Myers excerpt for example on another female writer (although he could easily be talking about Paglia). Of Annie Proulx, Myers says, "...she seems unaware that all innovative language derives its impact from the contrast to straightforward English."

A common theme that Orwell took professors to task on about 5 decades ago in Politics and the English Language.; 11/15/2007 1:45 PM
Arelcao Akleos said...: JJ is referring to my appreciating some of Camille's books from the 80s, and early90s, as well as her rare [for the left] clarity on the Clintons. She was particularly astute on the damage done to intellectual life in the universities by the rise to power of the doctrinaire Left. A story she directly lived through.
This piece is poor. Maybe she was drunk, or tired, or not daring to say forthrightly what she wished to and so fell into the linguistic convulsions those whose heart is not in the deceit are prone to. Or maybe she's lost it. Being torn between the twin frauds of Edwards and Obama is not a good sign.
But she has a record of much fine writing, consistently evocative, often utterly graceful, and a read of crystal clarity. Even when in the service of ..hmmm..."idiosyncratic" notions.
It would be a mistake to judge her past command of prose by this piece, as it would be to judge Conrad by his "Nostromo", Pynchon by "The Crying of Lot 49", Faulkner by "Flags in the Dust", or Steyn in all those sentimental pieces about crooners and hoofers on Ol' Broadway.
Orwell's style is excellent, lucid and precise, but then so was the otherwise very different style of Camus. In the pantheon of prose there are many worthy of honor, even if they would not honor each other.; 11/15/2007 4:22 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: Exactly, AA, and this is what Myers reminds of in his article (if you have the time for all 21 pages). That is, it's better to judge a work on its own merit.

Myers sites an example, where he thought one particular book from an author as good. The other books from this particular author were widely considered shit, and the New York Times openly mocked Myers for it. According to the NYT, if Myers liked one good book of an otherwise shitty author, then Myers liked them all. Myers is tired of the Literary Establishment, and he's also tired of the masses gulping down, without question, what the Literary Establishment deems "a masterpiece of breath-taking achievement!"

Orwell warned of the dangers of insincere (and/or hypocritical) writing. My brain started gagging on all the adverbs and adjectives within the first paragraph of this Paglia piece. However, mft considers himself a humanist in the Enlightenment/classic Liberal intellectual tradition. With that said, I'll give the old bitch a pass on this one, based off your recommendation, AA.

And with the Righteous MFT Statement now set forth, I'll correct my first post and say that Orwell first set down "Politics and the English Language" about six decades ago (rather than the 5 that I originally stated)...; 11/15/2007 4:43 PM
Tecumseh said...: OK, got it now. Paglia has her moments, and she could be quite good some years ago, I also remember that. But she's kind of going to seed, though you can still see some flashes of brilliance now and then.; 11/15/2007 11:01 PM
My Frontier Thesis said...: The Devil's Dictionary on Camille Paglia.

I gotta start consulting that more often.; 11/16/2007 3:33 PM

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