Some Thoughts about Literary Criticism. The Guard: a Short Movie Review. Elite Eleven on ESPN.

Professor One

As I may have said before here, I often find good critical writing superior to what’s passing for good poetry and fiction. At least it can be more interesting. For example, in The New York Times Book Review, most reviewers are zesty stylists, getting me all fired up to read this or that novel or book of poems, only to have the so-called creative work disappoint me. 

So from time to time here, I think I’ll offer some sentences from fairly academic nonfiction that strike me as interesting and finely wrought, touching on the whole nature of arts and letters—and life.

I’ve already praised William Logan’s criticism as intelligent, provocative, entertaining, and full of good insights, all of which helps to wash down Logan’s sometimes excessive cruelty. I’ll probably return to him here. Northrop Frye, Robert Langbaum, Harold Bloom and Helen Vendler are other scholars and critics who deserve attention (though they receive plenty without my help).

ProfessorTwo

 Going further back in the twentieth century, Randall Jarrell and John Crowe Ransom are perhaps more acclaimed as critics than they are as poets. Maybe we’ll have a look at them one day too. I’ve read some Jarrell more recently than Ransom and found him more full of zesty opinion that his supporting examples justified.  

Professor Three

So here, today, to kick off a shallow, fun-filled weekend, are remarks from William H. Pritchard in his Lives of the Modern Poets. My admiration for Wallace Stevens is growing, and Pritchard is one of the scholars who’s helping me along. Pritchard's style can be turgid, but I find the payoffs well worth my effort.

About Stevens, Pritchard says:  “He had, instead, an idea, and with beauty, eloquence, and gravity, he proceeded to set down the great humanist truth he was possessed by for much of his life:  that we are the measure of all things, and that we know how to measure because we know we will die.” (212)

In Stanza V of “Sunday Morning,” Stevens writes, “Death is the mother of beauty” (210).  In trying to summarize Stevens' thinking, Pritchard goes on to say  “. . . how vital is the imagination . . .  we must transform reality yet not transform it too much.” (212)

Happy Weekend--speaking of which, I found the movie The Guard disappointing, despite good acting from everyone, including Brendan Gleason and Don Cheadle.  The plot drags, there’s not a lot character development, its efforts at humor are brief and mediocre, and yet it lacks serious heft as well. Also, a lot of the lines were lost on this American as the director and actors go for authenticity of dialect, it seems, in the West of Ireland.

But all's well because high school football begins today, followed soon enough by college and pro games.  On one of the ESPN stations (ESPN U?  ESPN 2)  there's a three-part series titled Elite Eleven, about highly touted high school quarterbacks at a camp run by Trent Dilfer, former NFL QB, and his staff. The show could be completely scripted, rehearsed, and edited, but it felt real enough tome. If you're a fan, you might give it a look. I was hooked.

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