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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1713
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 01:36 pm: | 
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I just read a review in a recent issue of Atlantic magazine wherein the reviewer stated that "White Teeth", Zadie Smith's first novel, was in fact a hodgepodge of styles she clipped from different writers. In fact, the reviewer stated that Smith herself has advanced this view of the book in a self review.
This book was a literary bombshell--people far and wide were holding up Smith as the Great Black Hope of Literature--is the reviewer correct? |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1117
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 04:10 pm: |
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Well...I can't say that I'm a fan, although I liked On Beauty. I, also, haven't read White Teeth. It seems to me, however, that the nature of good literature is that writers build from others....and she, according to Steve_S and the website devoted to her, built off of others...at least in On Beauty.
I also would call her the black hope...does he even conceive of herself as black...she sounds like a the multicultural type...but I am, however, unfamiliar with British identity formation...sorry for the rabble! |
Schakspir
Newbie Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 22
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 05:40 pm: |
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I disagree. She can write well, but from my eye she needs to learn how to rewrite. Unfortunately, she was given adulation much too early--she's only 29--and her writing has suffered as a result. On Beauty has a lot of details about American culture and dialect that are just flat wrong, and somebody needed to take a blue pencil to the MSS and chop a lot of extraneous words out. Unless she gets a better editor and/or agent, Zadie Smith is going to have some problems honing her craft in the future, esp. since she is raking in the pounds from what she does at such a young age. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1120
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 06:24 pm: |
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schakspir...with whom do you disagree? The question was about style, though good editing certainly makes the differences, but not really as it relates to CH's question, which is, as I read it, about an writer's relationship to a tradition, or as he seems to suggest the absence of an authentic voice...I also thought the dialect was off...but I'm unfamiliar with black Boston vernacular. |
Schakspir
Newbie Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 23
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:33 pm: |
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I disagree with people holding her up as the Great Black Hope of literature. The bottom line is that she is still a greenhorn. On Beauty should have been rewritten at least four or five times.
Secondly, there is one passage among many that points to how many problems the book has. Ms. Smith has a man eating INDIVIDUALLY WRAPPED Junior Mints. Everybody knows that in the USA Junior Mints are NOT individually wrapped!! |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1122
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 10:54 pm: |
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oops...I should said, "I also NOT would call her the black hope...does he even conceive of herself as black...she sounds like a the multicultural type...but I am, however, unfamiliar with British identity formation...sorry for the rabble!" So, I don't disagree with you..., but your example is insignificant to the question of skill and style, no?
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Schakspir
Newbie Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 24
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 29, 2005 - 11:12 pm: |
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"Howard took both his hands and put them under his wife's cataclysmic breasts....He brought his hands round to their summits, and massaged the handful he could manage. He touched his lips to her neck and kissed her there. And again on her ears, which were wet from tears. She turned her face to his. They kissed. It was a burly, substantial, tongue-filled kiss. It was a kiss from the past. Howard held his wife's lovely face in both of his hands. And now the same journey of so many nights over so many years: the kiss trail down her throat's chubby rings of flesh, down to her chest. He undid the buttons of her shirt, as she attended to the hardy clip of her bra. The silver-dollar-sized nipples, from which occasional hairs sprouted, were the deep familiar brown with only a hint of pink. They protruded like no other nipples he had ever seen...."
That's one example. Very skillful. But rather empty, overwritten and sloppy. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1123
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 12:35 am: |
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Hmmm....yes...i can see sloppiness...but I think her verbosity is a symtom, if u will, of her atttempts to caricature nineteenth century British writers. I too prefer taut prose...
Look here...clean but similar prose...Jane Austen, Emma
"Soon afterwars Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of the voice while assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard's for news of her fair friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and he sighed and smiled himself off in a way that left the balance of approbation much in his favour"
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1124
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 12:37 am: |
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i digress...i don't think she is "the great black hope"...I wonder how black she is...as in, if she's going the multicultural route or the human route... |
Schakspir
Newbie Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 25
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 01:20 am: |
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"Soon afterwars Mr. Elton quitted them, and she could not but do him the justice of feeling that there was a great deal of sentiment in his manner of naming Harriet at parting; in the tone of the voice while assuring her that he should call at Mrs. Goddard's for news of her fair friend, the last thing before he prepared for the happiness of meeting her again, when he hoped to be able to give a better report; and he sighed and smiled himself off in a way that left the balance of approbation much in his favour"
I'm sorry, but British writing of this kind really gets underneath my skin. So verbose, pompous, high-handed and cold as ice. Give me Celine or Baldwin or Chester Himes any day. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1125
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 01:49 am: |
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that may be so...but she is, i dare say, a product of her country and class...this too is true of Jane Austen. I can not say that I have read either Celine or Himes, but I have read Baldwin, and his prose is taut, biblical, and very...hmmm...negro (That was fun...i felt like an elist, liberal white literary critic...though I neither have the skill or the vocabulary to do such!) Zadie Smith neither seeks to embrace a black vernacular nor a black literary tradition! On the other hand, I am not proficient in black british authors...there is caryl phillips, but who else? Well, there is, of course, the apotheosis of black intelligence, brother CLR James...though I am more familiar with his political and historical texts! |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1126
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 02:47 pm: |
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y can I not see cynique's post? |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3203
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 02:47 pm: |
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Do you suppose the literary terms "bathos" and "purple prose" were inspired by the literature of the Victorian era? BTW, that passage quoted from Zadie's book sounds like something out of a paperback romance novel. But the literary community has anointed Zadie and given her "poetic" license to ramble on like someone who writes with a plume instead of on a word processor. BTW, didn't I read somewhere that her novel made the list of some guild's top 10 best books of 2005? Hummmmmm. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3204
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 02:50 pm: |
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heh-heh, Yukio. I deleted my post and re-wrote it because I wanted to revise it. As I have previously mentioned, I just discoverd the delete feature wherein you can delete your own post if you do it within the 10 minutes of writing it. Neato, huh. |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1127
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 03:10 pm: |
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cynique...i did not see the words "bathos" and "purple prose." And I have never read a paperback romance novel...so I can not speak on that....
this was my point exactly...she is british (old history of literature), biracial (safe) educated at Cambridge (credentials), and her subjects reflect a multiracial and ethnic society (safe...it says that there is racism but progress has been made), and her prose is indeed elitist and engages only the educated! This is in comparison to violence and general against blacks in england, and it seems, the dearth of good writers in a land of common folk literature...this is a return to the ol'....zane and others have had their dominance long enough...see Steve_s link about the nigerian-american harvard graduate...and see Norman Mailer's comments about the dearth of good writers.... |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3205
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 03:52 pm: |
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Yukio, I guess those terms are not that common anymore but I was able to find the following dictionary definitions:
Bathos: insincere or overdone pathos: triteness. sentimentalism.
Purple prose: a perjorative term for an elaborate or ornate literary style.
I haven't read Zadie's book so I can't comment any further except to say that it sounds like she may be getting the same kind of backlash as Edward P. Jones the black man who wrote "The Known Country", that book about blacks owing slaves and who subsequently became the darling of the white literary world in spite of black dissatsifaction with the subject matter.
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Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 809
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 06:47 pm: |
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I just began "White Teeth" and have "On Beauty" on its way, so I have little to offer at this point. Except for this: If this is true
hodgepodge of styles she clipped from different writers
then perhaps this style of fiction is true "hip hop literature" (e.g., sampling, paying homage to past masters, scratching, by young[er] artists, etc) rather than that other stuff that is about hip hop topics or set in "urban" locales... |
Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 219
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 30, 2005 - 08:34 pm: |
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Yvette, Yukio, Cynique, Shakspir,
I'm interested mostly in contemporary literature and some of my favorite English writers are: Monica Ali, Kazuo Ishiguro, Andrea Levy, Timothy Mo, Hanif Kureishi, Zadie Smith, et al. Many of these authors' novels (including White Teeth and Small Island) might appear on a college syllabus under postcolonial literature, so it's certainly not traditional British writing.
A young white British postmodern novelist I dig is David Mitchell (who's lived in Japan and is one of the few writers I know with an obvious Haruki Murakami influence). His latest, "Cloud Atlas," like Italo Calvino's "if on a winter's night a traveller" by Italo Calvino, contains a string of pseudo-novels and like Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo and Colson Whitehead's The Intuitionist -- is about the search for a text. So it's both postmodernism and metafiction (one characteristic of which is mixing genres and styles, "high" and "low" culture -- meaning advertising, genre fiction like sci-fi, mystery and spec fict, etc.
On Beauty is a little different than White Teeth, first of all, it's an academic satire (which Howards End obviously is not) and it's a satire of cultural politics, but also about the cultural politics of art (of several kinds, among them, two competing theories of "high" art: Rembrandt, but also rap music, and possibly a few others. Also interesting is that it's inspired by an aesthetic theory, i.e. Elaine Scarry's On Beauty and Being Just (which I'll probably read next week). Cornel West, in "Democracy Matters," connects hip hop to the concern for justice in prophetic Judaism: "It is important not to confuse prophetic hip-hop with Constantinian hip-hop. Prophetic hip-hop remains true to the righteous indignation and political resistance of deep democratic energies. Constantinian hip-hop defers to the dogmas and nihilisms of imperial America."
White Teeth is very postmodern and it's also a modern classic which will be discussed for years and decades to come (and there's no reason that On Beauty won't either). Like Mitchell's novel, it contains a hodgepodge of voices, she has an ear for the rhythms of language and dialect, it traces the histories of various characters over a 150 year span (back to colonial Jamaica, India, WWII Bulgaria, etc), it contains philosophical digressions (like the riff on Zeno's Paradox at the end of Chapter 17 -- like Haruki Murakami also does in Chapter 27 of "Hardboiled Wonderland and the End of the World"), it riffs on Seventh Day Adventism and a couple of Islamic groups, contains the classical Bengali poetry of Tagore and the movie "Goodfellas," etc. That's postmodernism, so if anyone wants to call it a hodgepodge, that's fine, however, the Great Black Hope thing is a little pejorative. Andrea Levy's "Small Island" won the Whitbread, Orange, and Commonwealth Prizes. Like the previous year's Orange Prize winner, "Property" by a white American writer, Andrea Martin, which unfortunately I haven't read, neither received much publicity (too good, probably), although Andrea Martin was interviewed by Bebe Moore Campbell in Black Issue, Toni Morrison raved about the novel and wrote the cover blurb, etc. I'm gonna have to read it, but I wouldn't put a demeaning label on that.
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1720
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 11:19 am: |
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Steve:
You saw the mote and missed the beam.
As I stated in my first post, the reviewer said it was a hodgepodge of writing STYLES (I believe Forster and Naipul and Amis pere and fils were mentioned among others) not a hodgepodge of writing and character voices.
Do you think that this criticism was correct? |
Schakspir
Regular Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 27
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 06:21 pm: |
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Steve, I'm sorry, but the book sucks. That is the general consensus even from very savvy fiction readers. Contemporary writers are so fucked up: they either play academic word games like Smith or Dave Eggers, or they go the low road a la Omar Tyree or Vickie Stringer, whose bullshit needs no description. Very, very, very few writers other than, perhaps Paul Beatty, and probably one or to others, can write a good literary book that is both exciting and intelligible and manage to be wholly fresh. |
Snakegirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Snakegirl
Post Number: 54
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 06:45 pm: |
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...sniff
Further proof that you haven't read Kola Boof.
I'm certain Paul Beatty would agree with me.
And don't talk about Dave Eggers. That's my friend.
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Snakegirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Snakegirl
Post Number: 55
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 06:48 pm: |
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Oh...
...and if you'd really like to read Zadie Smith being torn a new asshole (for completely personal reasons), then you'd really better pick up Kola Boof's autobiography. It's the chapter called "I Put A Spell On You".
Nephew of Daffy Duck.
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Schakspir
Regular Poster
Username: Schakspir
Post Number: 30
Registered: 12-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 06:50 pm: |
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"...sniff
Further proof that you haven't read Kola Boof."
But....you ARE Kola Boof. You even said so. |
Snakegirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Snakegirl
Post Number: 57
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 06:54 pm: |
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OK,
you get a blow job for that one.
VISA or MASTER CARD?
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Snakegirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Snakegirl
Post Number: 58
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 31, 2005 - 06:55 pm: |
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Siiiiiikkkkkke.
Just play'n. 
Happy New Year, Daddy.
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Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 220
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 07:27 am: |
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Yeah, Paul Beatty :::yawn::: who took a scolding from The Big Ish, not to be confused with the Big "If" (you know Ish was not invited to join the Black Arts Movement because he was considered an "integrationist," so he formed the Umbra group (I think it was called), which included Archie Shepp, Steve Cannon (perhaps one of your alltime favorites from the not-nearly the BAM-time players?), et al, and was one of the founders of the East Village Other in the '60s (which I used to read after the gig when I lived there at that time). And off course, he's currently involved with his multicultrualist "Before Columbus" foundation, I think it's called. Sure, everybody has their own pet definition of that and other terms (wouldn't want to enrage any of the theoretical Maoists on the shit-starter forums by saying the wrong thing cause, like, I read Dai Sijie's little number about the violinist in the Great Helmsman's re-education camp and I just might get packed off to the Catskills for some lessons in Unity Music to unlearn my evil "changes." Damn! And I was making such progress in figuring out what "THE BLUE NOTE" is -- let's see, it's either the flat third and flat seventh or the semitone between the third and flat third, and between the seventh and the flat seventh??
Sorry, maybe like some little Flask atop the shoulders of the Atlas-like Daggoo (you know Herman Melville conjured up the original "Master Blaster," recycled in Beyond Thunderdome) I'm supposed to be raxxle-dazzled by all this heady talk of Chris Haydens "pet" Caucasians: Pinter, Hemingway (Mr. Macho man and look how much has been written about Hemy's latency), Nabokov, Vonnegut, Fuentes, Anne Rice, William Shirer, et al. Gosh, I feel so INVISIBILIZED! OOps! Sorry, I forgot the touchy-feely militant position on Ellison makes his mere mention an open wound for militants:
Let's see, John O. Killens described Invisible Man as "a vicious distortion of Negro life" and Addison Gayle denounced it as "an assimilationist novel which belongs back in the days of the dinosaur and the mastodon."
On the PBS Ralph Ellison documentary which Cynique cited, he was called an "Uncle Tom" and Amiri Baraka calls him a "snob." Jerry Gafio Watts described Ellison as an "elitist" who was thwarted by a "great white master" inside his head. Gerald Early says that in the 1960s he was considered as "not contributing to the liberation of black people."
Then ya'll probably read Toni Morrison's "Love" interview with Hilton Als in the New Yorker in which she said "I write for black people. Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison wrote for white people. Invisible Man? Invisible to whom? Not to me." And she repeated the same riff in an interview with Cornel West (which she apparently got from James Baldwin, who had used the same riff years before).
Then, of course, the Big Ish spends a good part of the introduction to his "Reed Reader" beating down Ralph Ellison and writers influenced by Ellison, who he terms "Ellison chicken heads."
But not everybody here (like Yukio, for instance?) knows that Ralph Ellison was and still is considered an elitist and all the rest of that.
Shaks, I love you man, but I really don't think you're catchin me straight, or else ya think I'm not payin attention, but I am. We already had a thread for "On Beauty" (see below). But this particular thread, ostensibly about an Atlantic piece on "White Teeth" (and let's be real, the Atlantic didn't use the terms Great Black hope or "clipped" off of) was started by CH, who apparently has not read either book.
You bit (I didn't).
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Steve_s
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 221
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 08:26 am: |
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From Yukio: this was my point exactly...she is british (old history of literature), biracial (safe) educated at Cambridge (credentials), and her subjects reflect a multiracial and ethnic society (safe...it says that there is racism but progress has been made), and her prose is indeed elitist and engages only the educated! This is in comparison to violence and general against blacks in england, and it seems, the dearth of good writers in a land of common folk literature...this is a return to the ol'....zane and others have had their dominance long enough...see Steve_s link about the nigerian-american harvard graduate...and see Norman Mailer's comments about the dearth of good writers....
Yukio, that's not even logical, but besides that, you seem to be starting from a hypothetical position which is already biased. I say "seem to," because I don't know what you intend, but, I get the feeling that the above is intended (?) as kind of "proof" for CH's amorphous feelings of "racial grievance" against a book (and an author?) who he apparently hasn't read (?) Hard to say, because he's not really admitting one way or the other. In other words, Yukio, I get the feeling (and I could be wrong) that you and CH are doing the same thing you did with Edward Jones's "The Known World," which is attempting to prove that a black book is successful because it's not threatening to white people. It's a bullshit position, if only because in the latter case you had not yet read the Known World at the time you were dragging it down. You're doin the same thing now, jumpin on the bandwagon, except this time he's the one who hasn't read the book. Forget all your stuff about a "safe position," it's you who's taking the safe position.
Yukio, I left the On Beauty thread open because I was interested in your opinion, not in telling you what to feel about it (I ain't that crass).
Most book forums on the Internet have book discussions, sometimes lasting as long as a month. AALBC is one of the few which doesn't do that. And that's because the starting point, as in the case of The Known World, is usually outrage, ridicule, or some diatribe, grudge, or screed -- which will get you kicked out of any classroom.
Instead, we talk about the supposed "politics" of the book, but never about what's inside the book. The Known World was not a controversial book. Maybe you just didn't like it because it stands on its head the pseudo-Marxist notion of the light skinned house servant as traitor to the cause (because Moses is the HNIC, but he's not the white man's black man (that's Henry Townsend), he's the black man's black man (and when Henry Townsend dies, who do the slaves look to for deliverance? That's right, Caldonia.)
ON BEAUTY
Yukio, around the time Zadie was at Harvard, students had demonstrations and sit ins for a living wage for the janitorial (Easy Rawlins?), cleaning, and food service workers. The Haitian hustlers in the novels are working those jobs.
http://hcs.harvard.edu/~pslm/livingwage/year_end_update.html
Her prose is not "elitist," and neither is Howards End, it's advocation socialism, women's rights, etc.
WHITE TEETH
I know you haven't read it, but this also is not "old literature." Look, Hanif Kureishi's 1990 semi-autobiographicl coming of age story about Indian-white cultural interaction in a London suburb much like Zadie's, was serialized on BBC television in 1993. I read it at the time, so when I read White Teeth 6 or 7 years later my reaction was that she had written herself into the novel -- although her book is much more expansive, it's symphonic, and has big themes of history, race, genetic, and fate (fate is big in Monical Ali's Brick Lane, which Monica set in a housing project segregated area of London, inhabited in previous centuries by Jews, and before them Irish. But Monica didn't grow up there, and took a lot of flak from a certain segment of the community - daughter of a white English mother and Bangladeshi father, she grew up between Bangla and London).
But Zadie lives in the neighborhood she describes -- originally Irish, black, and now heavily Bangladeshi).
Rushdie is considered one of the first to describe the postcolonial condition in England. This is not "old literature" either. I never finished The Satanic Verses (1989), but before the London terror attacks, there was the fatwah on Rushdie -- of which writers like Kureishi and ZS, who satirize militant Islam, no doubt took not. But on this forum somebody might actually "like" the Ayatollah, so everybody's politics if different.
Yukio, Caryl Phillips and J.E. Wideman (both Oxford -- Wideman Ivy League since 1959) aren't credentialist.
In December I read 4 books by these Harvard-educated authors: Mawi Asgedom, Uzodinma Iweala, Colson Whitehead, and Benjamin Kunkel (Indecision is a comic novel about a 20-something slacker intellectual's conversion to socialist activism while in a South American jungle - ironically, for Bolivia, whose first "indigenous" president recently appeared with a Coca leaf necklace). |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1130
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 01:05 pm: |
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Chris Hayden: I got this!
Steve_S:
All is biased, so lets drop this subterfuge of objectivity. There is no such thing. It is funny that you mention the Known World...I don't recall what I wrote. You, it seems, seek to rehash an old discussion (consequently, you are bring up in the wrong thread our engagement about Known World and lol Watts piece, and a shopping lists of books and people that have nothing to do with po’ Chris Hayden’s question that you have yet to address). You, it seems, have old gripes, which you, as it also seems, failed to address in the past. So, and this I intend, to say sorry…it is over and return your shit to your bullshit comments! You seem to suffer from a bleeding heart, a la Howard, and failed chances to respond to my commentary.
Additionally, your attack, misplaced and misguided, has arisen, unfortunately, because you feel attacked…it seems that my comments on Smith’s elitism reflect your own elitism. This was not intent. You should take care to see, my liberal friend or foe, that I have (1) distinguished my feelings about the book from (2) Smith herself, and (3) the politics of the literary establishment.
Speaking of classroom, you should know not to argue by analogy. It is a poor strategy and suggests that you have not paid careful attention to what I have written presently.
Let us revisit what I did write. I said that I liked On Beauty, which means that I believe that her success is merited. You must have missed that part...Lets move on. I made the point that Good Writing, good literary writing, is always built from an engagement with other great writers. That too should have suggested that I thought her work merits success...again, you must have missed this...
At the same time, I certainly said she was safe. And she is. Her credentials, ancestry, and politics are safe...liberal but still safe.
Her writing is elitist. All of the books, you read, and I for that matter, are elitist (though, as quiet as it’s kept, I read a few Dickey novels). Anyways, cut the crap! Zadie Smith is an elitist…her credentials, subject matter, style … all elitist. I have not made this a moral question, as in good or bad, as you have… (you are such a bleeding liberal like Howard) but descriptive. Don’t feel guilty for being a liberal elitist. You should know that you can be elitist and advocate leftist positions. Marx was an elitist…writing about poor people! Martin Luther King, elitist leanings, education and background, was a “freedom fighter.” The women’s movement, as we all know, was by middle class racist white women!
The prose content—what it is about—maybe leftist, but its rendering, work choice, style is elitist.
Rather than argue my analogy, you should read what I have said. Rather than tell us what you like to read, you should read what I have said. Rather than, bring up old arguments, you should do so at the moment of engagement. And finally, you should embrace your elitism. Ironically, it seems that you like to tell people that you read books by Harvard graduates…You, like Howard, may have leftist leanings, but you are also, undoubtedly, elitist.
Perhaps, these should have been your new years resolutions!
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1131
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 01:16 pm: |
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Uh! I think I need an editor...lmao! Cynique, how do you retract a post?
Chris Hayden: I got this!
Steve_S:
All is biased, so lets drop this subterfuge of objectivity. There is no such thing. It is funny that you mention the Known World...I don't recall what I wrote. You, it seems, seek to rehash an old discussion (consequently, you are bring up in the wrong thread our engagement about Known World and lol Watts piece, and a shopping lists of books and people that have nothing to do with po’ Chris Hayden’s question that you have yet to address). You, it seems, have old gripes, which you, as it also seems, failed to address in the past. So, and this I intend, to say sorry…it is over and return your shit to your bullshit comments! You seem to suffer from a bleeding heart, a la Howard, and failed chances to respond to my commentary.
Additionally, your attack, misplaced and misguided, has arisen, unfortunately, because you feel attacked…it seems that my comments on Smith’s elitism reflect your own elitism. This was not intent. You should take care to see, my liberal friend or foe, that I have (1) distinguished my feelings about the book from (2) Smith herself, and (3) the politics of the literary establishment.
Speaking of classroom, you should know not to argue by analogy. It is a poor strategy and suggests that you have not paid careful attention to what I have written presently.
Let us revisit what I did write. I said that I liked On Beauty, which means that I believe that her success is merited. You must have missed that part...Lets move on. I made the point that Good Writing, good literary writing, is always built from an engagement with other great writers. That too should have suggested that I thought her work merits success...again, you must have missed this...
At the same time, I certainly said she was safe. And she is. Her credentials, ancestry, and politics are safe...liberal but still safe.
Her writing is elitist. All of the books you read, and I for that matter, are elitist (though, as quiet as it’s kept, I read a few Dickey novels). Anyways, cut the crap! Zadie Smith is an elitist…her credentials, subject matter, style … all elitist. I have not made this a moral question, as in good or bad, as you have… (you are such a bleeding liberal like Howard) but descriptive. Don’t feel guilty for being a liberal elitist. You should know that you can be elitist and advocate leftist positions. Marx was an elitist…writing about poor people! Martin Luther King, elitist leanings, education and background, was a “freedom fighter.” The women’s movement, as we all know, led, organized, and institutionalized by middle class racist white women!
The prose’s content—what it is about—maybe leftist, but its rendering, word choice, and style are all elitist.
Rather than argue by analogy, you should read what I have said. Rather than tell us what you like to read, you should read what I have said. Rather than, bring up old arguments, you should do so at the moment of engagement. And finally, you should embrace your elitism. Ironically, it seems that you like to tell people that you read books by Harvard graduates…You, like Howard, may have leftist leanings, but you are also, undoubtedly, elitist.
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1132
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 03:02 pm: |
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Steve_S: The more I read your comments, the more it seems you really haven't read my posts. In stead, you argue by analogy. Now, I didn't mean that Smith's literature was not comtemporary, I said that the style was...what you have italicized states that her literaure reflects her rendition of a multicultural society. She is neither sociologist nor historian, but a writer of fiction. But, I would question on the one hand, the socalled fluidity of culture that is depicted in On Beauty, and on the other hand, the salience of racism, which creates the binary white and its others.
When I mentioned Caryl Phillips, it was to make the point that I am unaware of race issues in London and had not read him close enough to comment on such. At any rate, to me, using standard english, mentioning literary artists or socalled high culture in general is elitist. John Edgar Wideman, one of my favorites, is elitist, even though he had tried to temper his style. The content is of the everyday, word choice..quotidian...his literary strategies, however, narrative form, chronological sequence, etc...elitist and I love it!
Elder Cynique taught me, long ago, that to be an elitist is to be an elitist. It is neither bad or nor good. It means you like or enjoy what the monied, at least in the past, read, write, dress, speak, attend, etc....this doesn't mean that you dislike or judge what the poor...drink, how they speak, etc...For some, a question of rearing, for my self, it is a question of preference...but, at the same time, I have only preferences that are not at all...elitist.
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Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 3216
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 08:04 pm: |
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You know Yukio, although I tolerate elitism, I don't whether I consider myself an elitist because I'm not materialistic. I don't even know if I'm bona fide bourgeoise because while I have middle-class values, I am not into status symbols and I appreciate street smarts as much as I do academic intellect. Anyhow, the way to delete what you've posted is to go to the upper right hand corner of your messsage and click on to the white square with the red "x" in it, then follow the instructions that come up. I think this has to be done within 10 minutes of posting. |
Snakegirl
Veteran Poster
Username: Snakegirl
Post Number: 59
Registered: 05-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 09:28 pm: |
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Although we never agree, that's exactly why I always liked you Cynique.
You're more practical than elitist, and you're an adapter, not bougie.
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1135
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, January 02, 2006 - 09:43 pm: |
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cynique:
I have not qualified these terms. I use them without any pejorative connotation. |
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1722
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 12:31 pm: |
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Steve:
You only got one right. To the list pet Caucasians with Vonnegut add Stan Lee, Jack Kirby (especially 64-67) Neil Simon, Alan Ginsberg, Walt Whitman, James Joyce, Melville, Poe, Byron (primarily his "Don Juan"), Dickens, Harlan Ellison, Dashiell Hammett Lewis Carroll--Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sylvia Plath and Emily Dickinson fall off and on the list depending on how I feel. There are some others who fall on and off the list too (DeMaupassant, T.S. Eliot, Shakespeare--)
Hemingway is definitely not on it. At first I fell for the hype ("greatest short story writer since Hemingway" many caucasoids gush when they find a new white guy writing short stories.)
He was a liar, a drunk, a bully, a fake (See the AMERICAN writer. He drinks too much, screws around on his wife, kills plenty of animals and fish. His clothes are drenched in gator blood.."
He excoriated his old man as a coward for committing suicide and stuck a shotgun in his mouth when he couldn't get it up anymore.
He did write four good books and several good short stories. Too bad. Trying to please America made him act a fool and then it killed him.
Schakspir:
You are exactly right. They have no vitality. They aren't angry or in love or struck funny by anything. They have let the academy turn them into a bunch of Eunuchs.
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1723
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, January 03, 2006 - 12:38 pm: |
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Steve:
Re: all those writers on Ellison--when they have written a book that tops Invisible Man, they will have room to talk.
And how do they qualify as "militants"? I bet Steve Urkel scares you to death! |
Rashena
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Rashena
Post Number: 128
Registered: 08-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, May 08, 2006 - 11:12 pm: |
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What website is devoted to her, Steve? I'd like to check it out! I just read On Beauty and am reading White Teeth again; read it when it first came out back in 2000.
Thanks! |
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