Saturday, January 25, 2003
Mursi Saad El-Din comments on some of the reasons for the decline of Western art (and culture) and the results of same.
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
19 - 25 July 2001
Issue No.543
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I quite often find myself harking back to subjects previously dealt with in this column. But after ten years this is, I think, forgivable for it is inevitable that one will sometimes repeat oneself. This time, however, I have intentionally chosen an old subject in a deliberate reversal of the saying "pouring old wine in a new bottle."
The subject is the state of writing nowadays, the distortion of language under the pretext of so called postmodernism and deconstruction. What makes me bring up this subject once more is an article by Jonathan Yardley recently published in the Herald Tribune under the title "Literary fiction has lost the plot."
Yardley discusses what another writer, Bryan Griffin, two decades ago referred to as "the language of pretension in gratuitously smutty, scatological books by writers passing themselves off as the literary elite." Yardley then quotes B R Myers's article "A reader's manifesto," which appears in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Myers is obviously an admirer of old-fashioned prose. He finds "precious little to admire in the self- conscious, writerly prose now in favour among the literati."
I find myself in complete agreement with Mr Myers, especially when he criticises a contemporary writer in favour among reviewers and literary prize-givers for a "weakness for facetious displays of erudition" and another who "thinks it more important to sound literary than to make sense." Myers believes the dominant themes of contemporary American literary fiction are essentially self-regard and self- promotion. He mourns the days when "the novel wasn't just a 300-page caption for the photograph on the inside jacket." Gone are the days when "intellectual content [could] be reconciled with a vigorous, fast-moving plot." These days there is a tendency to value "self- consciously writerly prose" while "plot, narrative and character are scorned."
Myers seems to be, like myself, an admirer of popular story tellers like Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham who "ranked among the finest novelists of their time, and were considered no less literary in their own way than Virginia Woolf and James Joyce." This was also true in the United States, where writers such as Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser and John O'Hara simultaneously enjoyed both critical acclaim and commercial success.
I still remember how much I enjoyed reading Somerset Maugham's books. Liza of Lambeth, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ales, and A Man of Honour are among my favourites. And his wonderful autobiographical sketch, The Summing Up, was my bible and guide to writing. And of course there were Christopher Isherwood's novels set in Berlin in the 1930s: Mr Norris Changes Trains, Goodbye to Berlin which inspired the play I Am a Camera and the musical Cabaret, both of which were made into films. All these were best-sellers in the old days.
At the end of the article Jonathan Yardley comes up with some thoughts that I believe are worth mentioning here. Yardley believes that the rise of television and the disappearance of what he calls the "big middlebrow magazines, like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's" have much to do with the state of contemporary literary fiction. He also blames creative writing schools which "encourage the self-absorbed, mannered fiction" so despised by Myers.
In fact, as Yardley also adds, modernism itself is much to blame as well, for it "values the obscure and the difficult." In the hands of a few masters, Yardley goes on to argue, this has produced masterworks. Mostly, though, it has produced third-rate imitations, acclaimed by critics out of fear of not marching in lockstep with the "illuminati."
I would add that the same applies to contemporary art, where the critics, afraid of being out of step with the times, praise these new, vulgarised forms of art. It would seem that what drives the crowd is still the herd instinct.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
¶ 1/25/2003 02:08:00 PM
Al-Ahram Weekly Online
19 - 25 July 2001
Issue No.543
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plain talk
By Mursi Saad El-Din
I quite often find myself harking back to subjects previously dealt with in this column. But after ten years this is, I think, forgivable for it is inevitable that one will sometimes repeat oneself. This time, however, I have intentionally chosen an old subject in a deliberate reversal of the saying "pouring old wine in a new bottle."
The subject is the state of writing nowadays, the distortion of language under the pretext of so called postmodernism and deconstruction. What makes me bring up this subject once more is an article by Jonathan Yardley recently published in the Herald Tribune under the title "Literary fiction has lost the plot."
Yardley discusses what another writer, Bryan Griffin, two decades ago referred to as "the language of pretension in gratuitously smutty, scatological books by writers passing themselves off as the literary elite." Yardley then quotes B R Myers's article "A reader's manifesto," which appears in the current issue of The Atlantic Monthly. Myers is obviously an admirer of old-fashioned prose. He finds "precious little to admire in the self- conscious, writerly prose now in favour among the literati."
I find myself in complete agreement with Mr Myers, especially when he criticises a contemporary writer in favour among reviewers and literary prize-givers for a "weakness for facetious displays of erudition" and another who "thinks it more important to sound literary than to make sense." Myers believes the dominant themes of contemporary American literary fiction are essentially self-regard and self- promotion. He mourns the days when "the novel wasn't just a 300-page caption for the photograph on the inside jacket." Gone are the days when "intellectual content [could] be reconciled with a vigorous, fast-moving plot." These days there is a tendency to value "self- consciously writerly prose" while "plot, narrative and character are scorned."
Myers seems to be, like myself, an admirer of popular story tellers like Christopher Isherwood and Somerset Maugham who "ranked among the finest novelists of their time, and were considered no less literary in their own way than Virginia Woolf and James Joyce." This was also true in the United States, where writers such as Scott Fitzgerald, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser and John O'Hara simultaneously enjoyed both critical acclaim and commercial success.
I still remember how much I enjoyed reading Somerset Maugham's books. Liza of Lambeth, Of Human Bondage, Cakes and Ales, and A Man of Honour are among my favourites. And his wonderful autobiographical sketch, The Summing Up, was my bible and guide to writing. And of course there were Christopher Isherwood's novels set in Berlin in the 1930s: Mr Norris Changes Trains, Goodbye to Berlin which inspired the play I Am a Camera and the musical Cabaret, both of which were made into films. All these were best-sellers in the old days.
At the end of the article Jonathan Yardley comes up with some thoughts that I believe are worth mentioning here. Yardley believes that the rise of television and the disappearance of what he calls the "big middlebrow magazines, like the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's" have much to do with the state of contemporary literary fiction. He also blames creative writing schools which "encourage the self-absorbed, mannered fiction" so despised by Myers.
In fact, as Yardley also adds, modernism itself is much to blame as well, for it "values the obscure and the difficult." In the hands of a few masters, Yardley goes on to argue, this has produced masterworks. Mostly, though, it has produced third-rate imitations, acclaimed by critics out of fear of not marching in lockstep with the "illuminati."
I would add that the same applies to contemporary art, where the critics, afraid of being out of step with the times, praise these new, vulgarised forms of art. It would seem that what drives the crowd is still the herd instinct.
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
¶ 1/25/2003 02:08:00 PM
