The Garden of Literature: In Defense of Reading -- Especially Good Books

   

         A book reviewer, critic, and novelist in his own 'write,' William Giraldi writes longish magazine pieces for The New Republic and other mainstream journals. That occupation, unfortunately, is a ceaselessly declining niche, so his new book, titled "American Audacity: In Defense of Literary Daring," is particularly deserving of attention. Leaving aside the question of "daring," what I took from this book was a learned and insightful defense of good literature, period. It's a book full of memorable quotes and judgments, those of writers and other critics, and some assessments offered by Giraldi himself.

            Of these last, the one that meant the most to me is this:

            "Storytelling was, remember, the first entertainment and our earliest font of information, our around-the-fire manna for those wide-eyed Paleolithic persons who became us."

            This comment appears in his lengthy essay on novelist William Gurganis, whose best known book is "Oldest Confederate Widow tells All." I haven't read that book -- some who have confided that 'all' rather more than a reader needed -- but Giraldi's assessment of the seminal role of the storyteller in human evolution appears to me to be worth repeating, and restating as often as possible.

            Those of us who read fiction, especially literary fiction, know why we do it: to confront once the nature of human existence, with all its secrets, endless variations and unplumbable depths. We need to plumb them anyway. We will die trying.

            Of course, not only do we get our fill of stories by reading books, we attend theatrical performances, and gorge ourselves on cinematic, televised and digitally streamed narratives of the actions and fates of human beings much like ourselves simply by being human. And we talk (some of us too much; others perhaps too little) about what happens in our lives.

            Because we need both to tell. And to listen.

            Storytelling saves us from isolation. It gets into our heads. It gives us ideas about how to cope with that terrible burden the 20th century gave us a name for that we are still using -- the "existential burden" of the human condition. Yes, it's a condition -- though people make fun of the term -- and yes, we're dying from it.

            In the meantime, we're here. What do we do with ourselves? How do we do it? And, just as important, how do we think about everything -- good, bad, and indifferent -- that happens in our lives and in our world?

            Stories give us models, examples, new horizons, ancient reinforcements, challenges, voyeuristic lives to live.

            Since the many-sided usefulness of stories and storytelling is an endless subject, I will arbitrarily cease pursuing it in order to offer a few shining moments from Giraldi's collection of commentaries.  

            Some of these are quotations from the literary canon that also prove endlessly useful, such as this brief, but perfect description of one of the most commonplace events in human experience: "the violet hour, the evening hour that strives/ Homeward." This comes from (of all places) T.S. Eliot's "The Wasteland."

            The violet hour does arrive everyday, and it's always a wonder. If we lose sight of its magic, we are forgetting one those "fundamental things" that, as the song says, "apply."

            Critic Wendy Lesser supplies the phrase "the serious pleasure of books." Often in the course of his essays, Giraldi references the idea that the major inducement for reading is 'pleasure,' and near his volume's end he suggests it is life's greatest source of enduring pleasure -- an explanation for why people go on reading on their death beds. Since, clearly, there no longer appears to be any practical advantage to it. "(T)he knowledge of literature still gives the most pleasure of all," he writes.

            Human life offers many different kinds of pleasure. So even a simple adjective like 'serious' may go some way to explaining the uses of reading, literature, essays, stories, poetry -- the whole bookish shebang.

            At another point in his consideration of literature and death, Giraldi quotes from Walt Whitman: "Let me glide noiselessly forth." Whitman was old when he wrote that, but when he was young he had much to say about death as well, including these famous lines:

“All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,/ And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.”

            A famous tome from the Middle Ages (not mentioned in Giraldi's essay) is titled "The Consolations of Philosophy." The consolations of poetry may be even better.

            Many of the longer pieces in this book are essays that justify the book's subtitle "In Defense of Literary Daring" treat writers of our time that the author admires. Among these are contemporary writers such as Gurganus, Padgett Powell, Barry Hannah, and a half dozen others that I have not sampled at all (I tend to stick to my favorites). His insights into writers I am familiar with -- James Baldwin and classic 19th century masters Melville and Poe -- are interesting, and I found pieces on these authors well worth reading. 

           Giraldi's assessment of some contemporary fiction writers I have read -- such as Dennis Johnson and Cormac McCarthy -- were interesting, though I think limited. His two essays on McCarthy struck me as narrowly hung up on the issue of violence in that author's work, especially since Giraldi acknowledged not having read the author's highly praised "Border Trilogy" which I found to be among the most affecting works of fiction published in the last three or four decades. The acts of tragic violence in these three books did not put their other virtues in the shade. Oedipus dies at the end of his trilogy, but that does make his story less engaging. So does Hamlet at the end of his short life -- but long-lived play.   

            The book ends, anticlimactically, with a negative review of a book by Richard Ford that I've never encountered. Ford is capable of duds, and I read one (though not the one reviewed here), but for a period of years I waited eagerly for each new title by this prolific author. His works engaged contemporary American life in the latter decades of the 20th century in a meaningful, engaging way. I'd call them 'a serious pleasure.'

            And then there are the essays about 'the critics.' 

            While I recognize the names of those to whom Giraldi devotes essays, I haven't read their tomes -- with one exception. And I whole-heartedly agree with Giraldi's assessment that the undisputed chief divinity of our era's literary critics is Harold Bloom, a good number of whose books I have read with pleasure and astonishment.

            Giraldi's summary of Bloom's career and his role in our era's academic controversies (where critics live) is intriguing, perceptive, and highly useful to anyone who is not a career academic in this field. Bottom line: in Bloom's view great literature is about love, beauty, and aesthetic pleasure.

            Some quotes from Bloom: "you will not become a better or more moral citizen by reading Emerson." You may, however, Giraldi summarizes the argument, "learn how to be yourself." Pursuing this point, he asks why is the "aesthetic" pleasure of literature essential? Because, Bloom answers, "we live by and in moments raised in quality by aesthetic apprehension."

            Our goal in life, as many have answered, is "more life." It's not a quantitative evaluation. Literature, and the other arts, offer us that "more."

            Bloom's early, groundbreaking criticism was encapsulated by the phrase "the anxiety of influence." Great writers, Bloom believed, were supremely aware of the works of the great writers who preceded them. But it's not writers suffering the burden of looking over their shoulders at the intimidating greatness of a Milton or a Shakespeare that is meant by "anxiety" in this theory, but the notion that something happens in their work to make it more original.

            "In this, my final statement on the subject," Bloom has stated, "I define influence simply as literary love, tempered by defense."

            Another of Bloom's contributions is the notion of "creative misreading" by "strong" poets of their predecessors' works. "Without Tennyson's reading of Keats, we would have almost no Tennyson," he states.

            Bloom's defense of the literary canon against narrow political interpretations of great works by those academics he christened "the School of Resentment" is clearly and strongly defended in turn by Giraldi. Again, this book offers a good explanation of the controversy for readers who may not have come across these terms, ideas, or academic battles.

            A few other judgments from Bloom out of the many major insights that Giraldi happily chose to share with us. On the first English Bible, produced and written by printer and literary genius William Tyndale: "Tyndale's New Testament affected all subsequent expression in the English language." He's responsible, scholars now say, for the beloved language of the famous King James Bible.

            Bloom's theory on Shakespeare's invention of the modern idea of a literary 'character' is summed up in this pertinent quote: Shakespeare's "characters change while overhearing themselves."

            Finally, Bloom's love of the pioneering American poet Walt Whitman is evoked in this beautifully learned encomium: "As Adam early in the morning, Walt is the unfailing God-man, our androgyne."        

            I'm giving the last word here to author Giraldi. Keep in mind that you're hearing this from somebody who in addition to his critical essays writes works of literary fiction:

            "Publishing is a business in which writers of ironclad intelligence and integrity must watch in paralysis as second-rate crowd-pleasers are lavishly lauded and feted, and so these writers cheer themselves up by imagining that their laurels will arrive after their deaths, when society finally gets wise and realizes the injustices it heaped upon genius." 

            For the record, he doesn't believe it happens often.

            "American Audacity" was published in 2018 by Norton. You can find it on Amazon. I found the copy I read in my library.