Bellow and the Puritans Just found James Wood’s…
Bellow and the Puritans
Just found James Wood’s remarkable review of James Atlas’ new biography of Saul Bellow. Read it. If you’re interested in serious fiction, it will provide rich brainfood.
If you�ve ever read Bellow, you�ll know he has never been afraid of The Big Ideas. As Woods suggests, the philistine tendency of the new biography is indicative of a lazy, self-regarding culture. Anyone who even alludes to a philosophical idea, particularly in the literary scene, is ridiculed for pretension.
Chris, Spike’s editor, recently complained that literature is not �rock ‘n roll� enough. As if in response, a bunch of British writers have put together a manifesto for fiction and named their movement after the song “All Hail the New Puritans” by The Fall. See Salon for more details. The New Puritans, as they�re called, condemn any kind of non-linearity in narrative. So, even if life is a complexity of interweaving memories and sensations, lightening-fast events and imaginative reconstruction and construal, the New Puritans think it should be ignored in favour of �clarity�, whatever that is, and �action�, which, when it appears as literature, I would suggest, is definitively �inactive�. Their solution takes the form of lazy denial. It is philistinism masquerading as avant-garde. I would despair but contempt is more enjoyable.
Despite what the Salon article says, fiction is always in a dull patch, just as stars are always surrounded by void. Bellow is a glowing star. You can guess what I think The New Puritans are.
Other SpikeMagazine.com posts of interest:
- Collected Bellow Does one wait for the paperba…
- Saul Bellow - An Appeal
- Mr Twat reads Paul Auster
- Saul Bellow Dies At 89
- Experience to Innocence
Buy Books Online
 |
 |
|
