line http://americanbookreview.org

ON Horace L. Fairlamb reviews Robert N. Bellah Edited by Robert N. Bellah and line Steven M. Tipton

John W. Maerhofer reviews Th e Ro b e r t Be l l a h Re a d e r Chandler Brossard Duke University Press Edited by

Ov e r t h e Ra i n b o w ? Ha r d l y : “Bellah’s failure to fit snugly the pigeonholes of traditionalism, Co l l e c t e d Sh o r t Se i z u r e s , and postmodernism Sun Dog Press will pose a challenge to partisan habits of the mind.” “Brossard’s fiction illuminates the extent to which the logic of the anti-aesthetic model dominates the postmodernist imagination.” Thomas S. Williams reviews Arnold Rampersad

Ra l p h El l i so n : A Bi o g r a p h y Bryan Brower reviews Paul Ruffin Knopf

Th e Se g o v i a Ch r o n i c l e s “Ellison is an artist with much more Louisiana Literature Press in common with his namesake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, than Amiri “Ruffin is honest about simple Baraka.” people’s stupidity, but his writing does not deprive them of humanity.”

Rochelle Ratner reviews Thomas E. Kennedy

A Pa ss i o n i n t h e De s e r t Sascha Pöhlmann reviews Günter Grass Wordcraft of Oregon Translated by Michael Henry Heim “Readers have been introduced to Pe e l i n g t h e On i o n a very troubled mind which only Harcourt exposes itself slowly as the book progresses.”

“Peeling the Onion is a postmodern autobiography that highlights the genre’s inherent problems.”

Jean Braithwaite reviews Ander Monson

Ne c k De e p a n d Tracy Daugherty reviews t h e r r e d i c a m e n t s Vincent Craig Wright O P Graywolf Press Re d e m p t i o n Ce n t e r Bear Star Press “Neck Deep should be read by anyone who cares about new “In language, nothing more developments in nonfiction.” effectively reveals the possibility of something more than a stripped-bare sentence.”

LineOnLine announces reviews abr featured exclusively on ABR’s website. Innovation Never Sleeps @ March–April 2008 29.3 line ONline http://americanbookreview.org

Th e Lo g i c o f t h e An t i -a e s t h e t i c John W. Maerhofer

authorial intelligibility, an indication of the “schizo- phrenic” nature of the anti-aesthetic model which Ov e r t h e Ra i n b o w ? Ha r d l y : became central to his work: “I’m always surprised Co l l e c t e d Sh o r t Se i z u r e s and puzzled when I meet people who have read my Chandler Brossard work and like it because I don’t really know what Edited by Steven Moore they get out of it—I really don’t know…. What I get out of reading is something that is new to me, new Sun Dog Press and deepening and takes me someplace in the human http://www.thesundogpress.com spirit that I haven’t been before.” 322 pages; paper, $15.95 In this sense, many of the pieces in Over the Rainbow? Hardly read like collages of interlacing visions or fantasies, thus, offering a particular insight Any attempt at defining postmodernist fiction into the mechanism of the anti-aesthetic itself, as must consider how the suspension of the tradition- A Chimney Sweep Comes Clean (1985) and Post- ally prudent boundary between reader and writer cards (1987) reveal most concretely. The former, an is replaced by a literary system through which the introduction of sorts to the spectrum of voices that process of writing and reading happens simultane- Brossard utilizes to dismantle the singularity of liter- ously. Indeed, it may be possible to argue that much ary narration, comes closest to what Hal Foster has of what has become designated as postmodernist called the “ideology of transgression” that defines aesthetics functions according to an anti-aesthetic the anti-aesthetic mode of the avant-gardist whose model that facilitates the dislocation of that bound- intention it is to exceed the limits of conventional- ary (Samuel Beckett’s short stories or William S. ity. Suffering as these pieces do from the attempt to Burroughs’s Naked Lunch [1959] come to mind). reconcile the autonomy of the anti-aesthetic with the In such works, literary objectivity is immediately necessity of literary expression, what emerges, then, replaced by an internal (anti)logic that consciously is a critical awareness on the part of the author who exposes the underlying suspicion of the narrative manipulates the anti-aesthetic façade by mitigating structure, as the following declaration from Chandler positions and incorrect positions, plus no narrative incidents through a type of covert famil- Brossard’s Raging Joys, Sublime Violations (1981) position at all. Those people who fall into iarity, as A Chimney Sweep Comes Clean reveals: sympathetically reveals: the third category in reality live in empty “Communications with the outside world have virtu- caves while telling themselves they oc- Va bene. Traditional literary demands ally ended. Very likely, considering the organic state cupy the presidential suite. History tells have been met. The illusion of physical we are in, they have putrefied.” us what happens to such self-deceiving reality has been created. Atmosphere and all that. Sociopolitical implications and reactionary types: they drown in the piss details have been cannily supplied. The Brossard’s fiction illuminates the of the dragon…. In a world beset by age-old bourgeois writer-reader arrange- extent to which the logic of the capitalist plunderers and mass-murders, lewd Common Market loansharks and ment has been carried out. And to what anti-aesthetic model dominates the end? Smugness and self-deception, aes- land-grabbing Israeli violin-strokers, one thetic and political status-quoism, cultural postmodernist imagination. resolute fact stands out: The future lies and humanistic fraud, and endless spec- ahead, not behind… tatorship empathy—those are the ends of Notwithstanding the complexity of Brossard’s Generally speaking, Over the Rainbow? Hardly of- such trickery and brown-nosing. aesthetic mode, what stands out in his work is the fers a fascinating look into one of the most peculiar endeavor toward exposing the American social Taken from one of the most powerful sections personas of contemporary American fiction. Steven condition, especially what he sees as the passive of his posthumous compilation, Over the Rainbow? Moore does a commendable job of assembling the acceptance of militarism, the emerging fascist state, Hardly: Collected Short Seizures, Brossard’s fic- collection, including some of Brossard’s poetry, and the persistence of global imperialism. It may be tion illuminates the extent to which the logic of the aptly entitled “Traditionally a Place of Banishment.” possible to argue further that if one of the tenets of the anti-aesthetic model dominates the postmodern- Most notably, the question which remains lucid in vanguard artist is to utilize the aesthetic dimension ist imagination. Set to its own internal anti-logic, Brossard’s work is whether acts of aesthetic resis- for the purposes of unveiling the systemic forma- Brossard’s “short seizures” make demands on the tance can undo the agenda of imperialist war and tions that engulf social relations, Brossard attempts reader, particularly those who may not be thoroughly global exploitation, which he understood as systemi- to utilize the capabilities of the anti-aesthetic for the comfortable with reading in the avant-garde tradi- cally working against social progression; specifically, purposes of reproducing a broader political effect, tion in which literary “acts” take precedence over does the cloak of the anti-aesthetic stance restrict the a tenuous interpretation considering the underlying representational systems that transmit meaning. It critical voices needed to bring down such agendas, skepticism of his work which at moments borders on is imperative, thus, to consider how the concep- or does it advance further opposition? Such ques- nihilism. Raging Joys, Sublime Violations, however, tual façade of the anti-aesthetic impulse structures tions remain on the horizon of the Brossard’s work presents the reader with some of the most socially the multiplicity of experiences—ranging from the and should persist as an indispensable reminder of conscious writing of the collection while still main- miserable, sardonic, political, to the mischievous the historical contingency of aesthetics and politics taining the anti-aesthetic veneer, similar in style to and pornographic—as part of the reading process, throughout the twentieth century and into our own the poetry of Louis Zukofsky whose early poetics of something which Brossard himself related in his era. the 1930s attempted to infuse Marxism and the avant- 1985 interview with Steven Moore, who also edited garde tradition. For Brossard, writing in the midst of the present collection: “When I think about it, I real- the Vietnam War and, thus, within the framework of ize that my writing life has not been happenstance an imperialist methodology, the absurdity of such in terms of my character makeup. I think I went into conditions lends itself to the disdainful quality of writing for the very simple reason that very deeply I John W. Maerhofer recently completed his PhD dis- the piece, a risky technique that at moments has a needed a number of voices in order to survive. That’s sertation on aesthetics and politics at the Graduate bracing effect on the reader: what brought me to fiction.” Brossard goes on in Center, The City University of New York. He teaches the interview to reflect on the hovering simultaneity As far as the great Marxist-Leninist English and comparative literature at Queens Col- between the activity of reading and the limitations of revolution is concerned, there are correct lege, New York.

March–April 2008 Page 1 L Hu m b l e Or i g i n s Bryan Brower

divided into two parts (“From the Front Porch” and “The People and the Land”) with the third part consisting of a single Th e Se g o v i a Ch r o n i c l e s about a man returning home Paul Ruffin to die. All of the writings concern the area of Segovia, West Texas and the Louisiana Literature Press adventures Ruffin had among the people http://www.louisianaliterature.org/press living there. 195 pages; cloth, $21.95 After reading through the first part, I became alarmed that Ruffin was pulling a Jerry Springer—an intelligent, educated, articulate writer inviting peo- I live in a strange place populated by strange ple to expose their stupidity in amusing people. A month ago I had a barbeque where several and degrading ways. The cause for this coworkers, neighbors, and “Good Missouri Folk” alarm was the fact that Ruffin portrays Detail from cover partook in the festivities and dazzled me with their himself sitting, often on a porch, and bizarre and often disturbing existences. One guy listening to simple and ignorant, albeit boasted that his four-year-old son, who he named af- humorous, stories told by simple and ignorant people, in Mississippi, did a tour of duty in the Army, and ter a video game character, has been watching Friday largely by the couple Mr. and Mrs. Pate who own a once upon a time wanted to be an electrical engineer. the 13th films since he was two. He further explained ranch in Segovia. The stories include such yarns as He recognizes the people in Segovia because he that his son didn’t like Nightmare on Elm Street be- a bowhunter shooting a half-frozen Butterball for grew up with those kinds of people, counts himself cause “Freddy’s stupid.” Another guy bragged that Thanksgiving dinner, Mr. Pate eating plant food as one of them, but as a man of humble origin who he lost his virginity to a female babysitter when he because he thinks it will boost his libido, a young got himself an education and became a member of was seven years old. He told this story in front of woman forking her tongue with a razor blade and the intelligentsia, he can be incredibly hard on them, his fifteen-year-old son, who just stared with a blank then having to relearn to talk, and so forth. almost condescendingly so, yet still love them and look on his face as if he had heard the story before. A call them friends. girl, who claimed to be a Christian, could not decide In the story “Charlie Swartz Talks about the if Jesus was a Hebrew or a Jew. And another person Ruffin is honest about simple people’s Big Bang,” Paul Ruffin states that Charlie is his good drove away from the barbeque without a word, beer stupidity, but his writing does not friend, yet when the deep subject of the universe’s in hand. He had a bumper sticker that said, “Guns deprive them of humanity. origin comes up, Ruffin almost cruelly ridicules don’t kill people, Abortions do.” the man. “I’m thinking about Copernicus starting Many of my educated friends from this area all this, but if I bring it up, he’ll just snort and say have a great amount of fodder for their fiction be- Like Springer, Ruffin offers little conversation that he never heard of anybody named Copernicus.” cause of the fact that they were raised with people in return for the stories that he hears, simply asking Ruffin is saying that Charlie, a retired high-school coach mind you, is so stupid that not only does he not like this. I do not because although I grew up among the necessary questions to keep them from digress- know of Copernicus’s contributions to science, but these people, and still have occasional contact, I did ing too far from their main topic. Often the stories that he wouldn’t even recognize the name. Strangely everything in my power to isolate myself from them. and the people telling them give Ruffin great mental and paradoxically, the insult ceases to be an insult I hid from them by crawling into books, magazines, anguish. After listening to Mrs. Pate, who believes when you realize that Ruffin recognizes his friend’s movie theatres, and university classrooms. Today, I every tabloid she has ever read, describe how Amelia Earhart’s plane wrecked due to flatulence brought on ignorance yet still listens to the man’s thoughts on the struggle with the animosity I feel for these people from a can of beans, Ruffin states: big bang, even going so far as to find those thoughts and the sympathy I have for them. I know the dis- poignant. advantages they face, yet I have faced those same There usually comes a point when I’m Ruffin has not barricaded himself behind the disadvantages as well. I wonder why they cling to a listening to her and that tabloid stuff that walls of a university, nor surrounded himself by religion that celebrates ignorance. I wonder why the I feel like a jar that has been filled com- equally educated men and women. Though he has pursuit of knowledge and wisdom is not listed among pletely up to the rim and one more drop intelligent friends, some of which appear in The their virtues. I wonder why they do not read, or when will send me over the edge. I’ve reached Segovia Chronicles, with whom he can converse they do, why it’s Harry Potter or Stephen King. it. I simply cannot take another drop. So about Robert Frost and and other The original scribes thought that common men I stand and stretch and thank her for the great writers and thinkers, he does not exclude less- tea and tabloid news and head off down and women were not even worth writing about, thus educated people from his discourse. He knows that the road to the Winship place. we have a long tradition of epic heroes. Eventually, such people can be sources of inspiration, can have literature opened its pages to the destitute, the small, Are you getting an image of Jerry Springer looking unique and interesting views on life, can share good and the working-class heroes. Some writers elevated down and shaking his head in disgust over one of his stories and good food, and can demonstrate great these characters to the level of the epic heroes that guests’ display of idiocy? acts of humanity. preceded them. Other writers, who emerged from this Thankfully, Ruffin is not exploiting simple peo- In The Segovia Chronicles, Paul Ruffin contin- lowly class, demonstrated the paradoxes of writing ple, nor is he lording his intellect over them. When ues the tradition of contemporary educated writers about common men and women. Jack London was Springer is finished with his guests, he sends them on examining their common roots and their responsibil- a socialist yet wrote about Nietzschean characters their merry ways, cashes his check, and never gives ity to the depiction of the community from which they competing brutally against one another. In “The them a second thought. Paul Ruffin considers Mr. were raised. Ruffin’s example of peaceably mingling Dead,” James Joyce gives us an educated character and Mrs. Pate and Segovia’s other residents to be his with simple men and women despite their lack of very much at odds with the people he grew up with. friends. Despite their lack of educations, Ruffin cares education clearly intimates that isolation is not the These writers vigorously explored an idea that is rife for the people he portrays in The Segovia Chronicles. answer. I may live in a strange place populated by with internal conflictions and the complex nature of He visits with them often, even if they inevitably strange people, but I cannot hide from them forever. class distinction and upward mobility. exhaust him. He is honest about their stupidity, but Perhaps it is time for me to have another barbeque. It is an increasingly difficult task for contem- through his writing, he does not deprive them of porary writers to describe common men and women, humanity. And like them, he considers himself to particularly in a negative light. Even my descriptions be simple. above, however honest, have the scent of elitism, Paul Ruffin suffers from a condition euphemis- something intolerable for modern intelligent readers. tically described as “humble origins.” Anyone famil- I find myself often warning my friends that their short iar with Ruffin’s poetry knows that he is no trust-fund stories and poetry border on exploitation. baby and that he doesn’t write about cluttered New The question of exploitation arose when I York City apartments. He writes about cattle, frozen recently read Paul Ruffin’sThe Segovia Chronicles, ponds, fruit trees, and the joys of fishing. He was Bryan Brower is a writer from Missouri where he a collection of thirty personal essays and sketches born in a small town in Alabama, raised in another lives with his wife and son.

Page 2 L American Book Review A Fall e n He r o Sascha Pöhlmann

ultimately fails to explain what it seeks to describe. Grass uses the image of the onion to illustrate his Pe e l i n g t h e On i o n autobiographical project, peeling off layer by layer of memory and history: “The onion has many skins. A Günter Grass multitude of skins. Peeled, it renews itself; chopped, Translated by Michael Henry Heim it brings tears; only during peeling does it speak Harcourt the truth.” There is no core of true facts at which http://www.harcourtbooks.com to arrive after sufficient peeling, only little truths, 432 pages; cloth, $26.00 personal speculations, and explanations. Peeling the Onion is a postmodern autobiography that highlights the genre’s inherent problems, fully aware of the unreliable nature of memory and the impossibility Let’s get it over with: in his autobiography, to impose a linear structure on the past. The most Peeling the Onion, Günter Grass admits that he was striking word that recurs in numerous variations in a member of the Waffen-SS when he was seventeen, the German text is the contraction “weißnichtmehr,” emphasizing that he never fired a shot, but also ex- unfortunately translated conventionally as “don’t plaining that he never told anyone of his member- know,” thereby missing the conscious hastiness of Detail from cover ship because of “a recurrent sense of shame.” Now passing over certain blank spots no memory can ex- that Grass’s latest book is available in a fine English ist without. This awareness is repeatedly expressed of smaller stories that somehow become the narrative translation by Michael Henry Heim that nicely in more detail when Grass points out those blanks of their time. If every tiny tale Grass tells is a dot on conveys its ornate, complex, and precise prose, it in the narrative where there is “[n]othing to attach a page, these dots in the end make up a grainy image is worth recalling what a field day it was for the to the plot,” and where “memory offers a number showing shapes vague enough to remain question- German media when the original went in print, and of versions,” he often explicitly describes each of able, but with enough presence to convey a sense of Grass’s confession made it on every front page. Some them. The text wears the inevitable fictionalization representation—not unlike a Gerhard Richter paint- called it a marketing stunt of memory conveniently of the remembered past on its sleeve, but it never ing. Peeling the Onion is about growing up in the improving in time to improve sales, but late enough lacks subtlety as it weaves a complex network of Third Reich, growing into its ideology, then being to have made possible being awarded the Nobel narratives. The autobiographical content is closely ripped out of it by the war experience; it is about Prize in 1999; others gleefully claimed one of the intertwined with the content of Grass’s fictional texts, surviving in postwar Germany, about dealing with most persistent critical voices in German cultural and occasionally allowing Oskar Matzerath from The Tin its past, present, and future; it is about the struggle political life to be dishonored. A Hitlerjunge, sure, Drum (1959) his own existence as not quite a char- of an artist trying to find at the same time a medium a Wehrmacht soldier, yes, and who wasn’t a party acter, and continually pointing out parallels between and a voice, food, and shelter for the near future, and member, but the SS? There is nothing like seeing this fictionalized life and the fictions it produced. In a hero fall, especially if he was the one who never if possible also some sex and maybe love; it is about addition, the narrative often breaks its roughly linear seemed to grant Germany any rest, who refused to the Gruppe 47 and the literary world; it is about the structure to anticipate or speculate, then returning to join in with even the happiest political choruses, and accidents of history that make us believe history is a the point where autobiography demands a choice to instead provided a dissonant and dissident voice that single chain of causalities. Playing with that apparent be made. The coherence of Peeling the Onion is not to different ears sounded self-righteous, annoying, linearity, Grass even manages to sneak in a punchline one of historical causality, but of a narrative voice entertaining, or liberating. Especially in the tabloids, here and there, for example, when finally disclosing powerful enough to bind all its diversions and con- Grass’s autobiography was quickly reduced to the the (imagined?) identity of that dogmatic Catholic he tradictions into a text that is entertaining precisely confession it contained, since that strategy reduced played dice with as a fellow prisoner of war. It is en- for its brokenness. the complex perennial critic to the plain Nazi, and tertaining and moving to watch the weaving of these that simplified matters immensely. While Grass may strands precisely because they are not supposed to have often been wrong in his analyses, it seemed Peeling the Onion is a postmodern form a representative historical tapestry, but because the finished text is full of holes, full of bright colors that they would not have to be engaged any longer autobiography that highlights the themselves because the ad hominem challenge was that sometimes match, and full of the serious play delivered to his critics on a silver platter by Grass genre’s inherent problems. of a master artisan intentionally leaving faults in the himself. work not to praise the perfection of God but because As one can imagine, having actually read Peeling the Onion is not a confession, and this story needs to be told imperfectly. Peeling the Onion does not help support such sim- luckily, it is not merely the story of the life of Günter plification. While every autobiography may be an Grass. Instead, Grass succeedes in telling his story autojustification, Grass does not ask for compassion as well as much larger ones. As the very personal Sascha Pöhlmann is a lecturer in American studies and understanding. In fact, readers witness an almost account moves through several decades from the at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, eighty-year-old author struggling to understand 1930s until 1960, with occasional excursions into Germany. He is currently working on a book on his seventeen-year-old self, a narrative voice that times up to the present, it presents a vast collection postnationalism and Thomas Pynchon.

An Ex i s t e n t i al Pat h Tracy Daugherty

Vincent Craig Wright’s debut story collection, its hinges straining, and Mattie’s mother bought the Redemption Center, showcases Wright’s capacity for first dress to spring out and walked to Mattie’s house sentence making. Plot, character, and theme do not and gave it to her”; “And the rain, different shines Re d e m p t i o n Ce n t e r generate Wright’s stories. Nor does the form and flow showing up in the water.” Vincent Craig Wright of the paragraph. Sentences, sentence by sentence, Even now, decades after Ernest Hemingway’s Bear Star Press make these stories happen. death, any American writer using spare prose with http://www.bearstarpress.com Consider the following examples: “He knew he repetitions and an emphasis on the unadorned image 128 pages; paper, $18.00 was the worst thing she could imagine, but he looked invites comparison to Papa, and though such a link for her, looked to her for something, and she was is ultimately unfair to Wright, it’s helpful in sorting gone”; “He wanted to tell her poetry was a trick of words”; “The man with the green trunk came back, Daugherty continued on next page

March–April 2008 Page 3 L Daugherty continued from previous page

mysterious process (maybe the stamps will deliver with “everything,” we begin to lose the sharp defini- an unexpected treasure) where philosophy is not in tions of objects. To know the world again, item by play so much as faith and forgiveness. In Wright’s item before all the items are gone, we have to empty world, idealism and realism collide in small-town ourselves. “I realized I was happiest when I didn’t churches, fly-by-night phone service businesses, think about things,” the boy says. “I like to…wake dust-filled highway intersections, and hillsides alight up and not know where I am.” with candles spelling the obscure messages of a At one point, he considers his grandmother’s crackpot/prophet. “There ain’t nothing to point out,” Bible, which is filled with “more words” than any says an observer of these flaming hillside words. “Or volume he has ever seen. Still, he recalls that his there’s everything.” The world is what it is, ruggedly grandmother referred to the book simply as the Word. specific; yet we suspect there’s something more. Theology aside, the boy is aware, on some level, that Paradoxically, in language, nothing reveals the behind combinations of words lies the single word: possibility of something more—of transcendence and connections start somewhere, one link at a time. By redemption—more effectively than a stripped-bare story’s end, his resistance to the accumulation of sen- sentence. As Randall Jarrell noted, in poetry and sations is such that, though perceptually we remain prose, the too-concrete has a tendency to become rooted in the boy’s world, emotionally and spiritually abstract. Descriptions of sensations melt into one we do not quite know where we are: a transcendence, another. Wright understands this intuitively, or he has a move toward the ultimate source of things, made learned it, and he uses the slow accretion of images possible—or almost—word by word by word. out how he proceeds as a writer. Many factors led to build his stories word by word. Wright’s interest in redemption is both genuine to Hemingway’s influential prose style, not the least and skeptical; ultimately, he is a more optimistic and generous writer—generous with story, with details— of which was his journalistic training, but primarily In language, nothing more effectively a phenomenological impulse lies behind his work, than his existential forebears (which he may or may a focus on objects stripped of habitual assumptions reveals the possibility of something not claim). Many of his characters proclaim a love of about them. The result of this approach is to expose more than a stripped-bare sentence. music and of spiritual rituals, passions which, set in the materials of the world in all their raw thingness, the working-class, semi-rural context of most of these a point not lost on Jean-Paul Sartre, who refined his In the title piece, a teenage boy, the son of a re- stories, recall the short fiction of William Goyen, thinking (and his literary style) based on his read- ligious mother and a rather hapless father, ponders his whose East Texas background Wright has shared. ing of Hemingway. As Sartre’s biographer, Ronald surroundings with obsessive attentiveness. Peering in Redemption Center is the first fiction title from Hayman, reports in Sartre (1987), Sartre wanted the window of a local redemption center, the boy says Bear Star Press, a small publisher previ- to blend “philosophical reflection” with the “direct it’s “not like a store. They get one item in and when ously devoted only to poetry. With the work of Vin- transcription” of personal experience, and thus by- it’s gone…it’s gone.” Rigorous specificity: a notion cent Craig Wright, Bear Star Press has maintained its pass the “familiar opposition between realism and that our young narrator then applies to language. “I allegiance to poetry—and transcended it. One looks idealism.” can’t think about everything I think about,” he says. forward to more fiction from this press, and to more In Redemption Center, Vincent Craig Wright “It has to start somewhere.” Thoughts are formed sentences from Wright. follows this existential path. As the book’s title sug- one word at a time; eventually, the accumulation of gests, he attends to the ruggedly specific, like drab things (a move toward generalizations and abstrac- Tracy Daugherty, a 2006–07 Guggenheim Fellow, shopping centers where beaten-down folks trade tions) shapes “everything” we think about. Relent- is the author of four novels, three short story collec- Green Stamps for promising goods, while keeping lessly, Wright traces the consequences of our usual tions, and a book of personal essays. His biography one eye on transcendence. “Redemption” implies a methods of perception: once our heads are crammed of Donald Barthelme is forthcoming.

Ha b i t s o f t h e Mi n d Horace L. Fairlamb

of Habits of the Heart (1985)—have associated important work on civil religion and culminating in him with the “communitarian” thinkers of the last his commentaries on the role of religion in politics Th e Ro b e r t Be l l a h Re a d e r several decades, who see in today’s collectivist, lib- after 9/11. The third section contains discussions of eral, libertarian, and conservative ideologues false the academy and society, ranging from the moral Robert N. Bellah choices between community and individual rights, dimension of scholarship to the politics of the cul- Edited by Robert N. Bellah and Steven M. Tipton and between liberal economics and social conserva- ture wars. And the fourth section links sociology Duke University Press tism. Yet, this, like most labels, fails to do justice to and theology. http://www.dukeupress.edu the range and complexity of Bellah’s work, which It is to Bellah’s credit that—when critiquing 568 pages; cloth, $99.95; paper, $27.95 takes full advantage of the capacious umbrellas of society—he avoids forced choices between tradition sociology and religion. (faith), modernity (science), and postmodernity (cul- tural/individual relativism). Like Jürgen Habermas, Bellah’s failure to fit snugly the Bellah critiques modernity’s pathological spread of In an age when public intellectuals are rare, it is instrumental reason. But where Habermas would pigeonholes of traditionalism, rarer still to find one whose academic work meshes marginalize narrative and myth, Bellah notes that de- seamlessly with his or her public voice. This anthol- modernism, and postmodernism will spite modernity’s apparent “triumph of theoretic con- ogy assures Bellah’s place in that scarcely populated pose a challenge to partisan habits sciousness…we humans remain inexorably mimetic zone. According to the standard academic rubrics, of the mind. [ritual, imitation] and mythic [narrative] creatures.” Robert Bellah would be identified with specializa- In that spirit, Bellah’s “Stories as Arrows” provides tions in sociology and religion. But as he notes in an eloquent and powerful defense of the body and the Bellah’s work is best approached as a multifac- his introduction to this anthology, his career “made imagination as irreducible counterparts to rational- eted illumination of modernity and its science, not a virtue of boundary crossing,” yielding a corpus ity, a view sometimes associated with postmodern only as a technological revolution, but as social and that includes theory, intellectual history, empirical cultural revolutions as well. This theme pervades the thinkers, but here without allergies to metanarratives, studies, and social commentary. anthology’s four sections. The first section is com- common interests, and objectivity. As an intellectual The writings by which most readers would parative and theoretical, dealing mainly with issue historian, Bellah reconstructs how Thomas Hobbes, know Bellah—his work on civil religion (Beyond of sociological scope and method, ranging from the Karl Marx, Durkeim, Weber bequeathed—along with Belief: Essays on Religion in a Post-traditional World evolution of religion to articles on Max Weber, Émile their insights—the conceptual muddles that render [1970]; The Broken Covenant: American Civil Reli- Durkheim, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The second gion in a Time of Trial [1975]) and his co-authorship focuses on American religion, beginning with his Fairlamb continued on next page

Page 4 L American Book Review Fairlamb continued from previous page so much contemporary political and social thinking [turns] it into objective assertions of a quasi-scientific excessively narrow, historically shortsighted, or criti- form….” Though Bellah admits that his localization cally under-theorized. of meaning implies “that all truth is relative,” he de- Naturally, Bellah’s failure to fit snugly the nies that “all truth is relativistic, that anything goes.” pigeon holes of traditionalism, modernism, and post- But is this a distinction without a difference? Bellah modernism will pose a challenge to partisan habits seems to mean that local beliefs are still subject to of the mind, although that is just why his thinking critique, although he also would shield “defining be- is especially valuable for academics and lay readers liefs” from neutral, external critique. In other words, alike. The clarity of his thinking will educate some faiths may only be assessable from within, a claim and provoke others. For all his virtues, however, are that many traditionalists vigorously deny. In fact, there identifiable weaknesses or glaring omissions? If some critics would charge that his denial of neutral there is a place where his clarity and even-handedness positions leads to performative contradiction: the are least complete, I do not find it in his politics, but principle runs afoul of itself insofar as it attempts in his view of the future of religion. to neutrally impose from the outside a prohibition On the one hand, much of Bellah’s work in against judging other faiths from a neutral position religion is both sociologically and philosophically outside all faiths. In short, Bellah’s argument will acute. His work on civil religion, for instance, shows strike many as trying to square the circle: i.e., render- the degree to which religion has been a part of the ing religious authority local by way of a universal American cultural fabric. Far from being a brief for limit on religious authority. radical critics of American liberalism, however, his Though readers will undoubtedly find their own view would give scant comfort to those who would points of difference with Bellah, they will also find tear down the wall between church and state. In fact, instruction, edification, and enjoyment throughout Bellah attacks the recent use of religious language for this rich volume. If nothing else, this anthology (perhaps the key philosophical issue in contemporary the promotion of an American empire (of George W. shows that Bellah’s already distinguished career philosophy of religion), Bellah’s clarity and generos- Bush’s pledge to rid the world of evil, Bellah won- deserves even wider recognition. ders if “what even God has not succeeded in doing, ity may meet their match. Regarding a philosophi- America will accomplish”). cal field divided between those who privilege their On the other hand, though Bellah manages to own faith and those who take an egalitarian view of reconcile individual rights and traditional religion the diversity of traditions, Bellah calls this choice Horace L. Fairlamb is Professor of Humanities much of the time, there are other times when his a “category mistake”; i.e., he claims that forcing and Interdisciplinary Studies at the University of generosity strains to the breaking point. For instance, comparisons of religious authenticity takes “language -Victoria. His main areas of interest are when it comes to the problem of religious diversity which is deeply contextual, that is confessional…and philosophy and literature.

A Ma n in Fu ll Thomas S. Williams

the status of a “one book writer,” and the mythology attending such a categorization Ra l p h El l i so n : overwhelmed Ellison’s persona. But it’s A Bi o g r a p h y scarcely hyperbole to state that any remain- ing mystery about the man has been revealed Arnold Rampersad by Arnold Rampersad in the superb Ralph Knopf Ellison: A Biography, as complete a portrait http://www.randomhouse.com of such a complex character as Ellison I 672 pages; cloth, $35.00; paper, $17.95 have ever seen. Rampersad rises to the oc- casion, page after page. Ellison deserves a good biographer, and though this is the first of what will undoubtedly be others, I find it One of the more astute cultural critics of the difficult to imagine any subsequently match twentieth century, Holden Caulfield, once asserted this stunningly good book. that the mark of a good book was “when you’re Such praise should not surprise anyone done reading it, you wish the author…was a terrific who has read Rampersad’s work before. His friend…and you could call him up on the phone books on Jackie Robinson, W.E.B. DuBois, whenever you felt like it.” Unquestionably, though, and Langston Hughes demonstrate what is had Caulfield succeeded in calling one of his favor- on display in Ralph Ellison: Rampersad’s ite authors, he might not have been too enthused meticulous research, graceful style, and his afterward. Who among us has not had that unsettling willingness to approach such prominent feeling of discovering that the author, in the flesh, is African American figures objectively. He not the same as the person whom we conjure in our neither seems bent on lionizing or taking head as we read? The same experience, I find, occurs them down a few pegs. Furthermore, he when one reads a biography of a writer, opening the knows how to stay out of the way: only in Detail from cover text with predispositions toward who that writer is, the acknowledgments—and then briefly— and exiting the same text with the feeling that one does Rampersad discuss how he came to write the notebook nearly every day and kept everything, judg- would have been better off having not learned so book. As well, Rampersad is as fine a scholar as he ing by his papers housed at the Library of Congress much about the person whose book, as Caulfield is a biographer, yet at no time does Ralph Ellison (and of which Rampersad makes exceptional use). would say, “knocks me out.” seem too academic; it is accessible to far more read- Moreover, Ellison lived during so many inherently Ralph Ellison has always struck me as the kind ers than those conversant with the mumbo jumbo of interesting periods, in such significant places, had he of writer that the Holden Caulfields of the world contemporary critical theory. not written Invisible Man, he still would have been would love to call up. The indomitable power of Yet what a task before him! To write the first an interesting subject, merely for the circles where his single novel, Invisible Man (1952), still inspires biography on Ralph Ellison, perhaps the most sig- and among whom he did travel (legendary Tuskegee readers of all ages and ethnicities, over fifty years nificant and/or influential African American writer of Institute, the Communist Party, among the black after its publication. But Ellison the man has always the twentieth century. Fortunately, Ellison seemed to and white literati of Richard Wright, Gordon Parks, seemed lesser known. As his much anticipated sec- know from an early age in Oklahoma that he might ond novel never appeared in his lifetime, he assumed be the subject of a biography: The man wrote in his Williams continued on next page

March–April 2008 Page 5 L Williams continued from previous page

Chester Himes, William Styron, and Saul Bellow, to while presenting both praise and criticism that the Robert Penn Warren. We’re confronted by Ellison’s name a few). Indeed, what Rampersad is able to write novel received after its debut and as it continued to vanity, amused by his affection for his dogs, surprised is something of a cultural history—particularly the exercise its presence in American letters. (Though no perhaps by his envy of Saul Bellow, intrigued by his development of African American literature and art in Scarlet Letter (1850), Invisible Man has remained in fascination with technology (not only a photo and the twentieth century; he also fashions a compelling print since 1952.) But Rampersad also uncovers, in stereo buff, Ellison was an early devotee of the PC). portrait of Ellison’s second wife, Fanny, a character Ellison’s own words, the writer’s fears that preceded These details and more combine to produce the por- almost as fascinating as her husband. the completion of his celebrated novel: “Ralph faced trait of Ellison, and there are also several moments in candidly the evidence that he was not a ‘natural’ this biography when Rampersad constructs a scene novelist. As he admitted to [Richard] Wright, who as ably as a novelist, especially when the Ellison’s Ellison is an artist with much more read ‘Richard Wright’s Blues’ and wondered whether home in Plainfield, New York burned down, with in common with his namesake, Ralph Ralph’s métier was nonfiction prose, not fiction, ‘I many pages of Ellison’s novel-in-progress inside. Waldo Emerson, than Amiri Baraka. have considered the possibility that I might not be a (Rampersad also makes no bones about Ellison’s novelist myself.’ However, more than anything else use of this house fire as a central myth for his fail- he wanted to be a novelist.” ure to finish the second novel.) And throughout the But Ellison did write a book, an incredible It’s this kind of work that makes Ralph Ellison over six hundred pages of Ralph Ellison, we hear novel, and Rampersad shows in great detail the such an intoxicating biography. Rampersad strives its subject, often in his own voice—to reiterate: he artistic development Ellison underwent, from a bud- to present as full a portrait as possible of a man saved everything—demanding to be viewed on his ding classical musician with an interest in jazz, to a who could be—and has been—presented as one own, as an American, an artist with much more in dogmatic Marxist reviewer of books, to a frustrated dimensional. A one-book-writer, a Tom, a sexist, an common with his namesake, Ralph Waldo Emerson, storywriter—nonetheless aided into print via his inspiring speaker but a less-than-stellar professor, a than Amiri Baraka. And it is both a testament to the friendships with such titans as Wright and Langston disdainful and distant artist, removed from the fray achievement of Ralph Ellison and the brilliant work Hughes—to the writer who produced Invisible Man of civil rights. Yet Rampersad does much to human- of Arnold Rampersad in this biography that the and spent the next years of his life writing exqui- ize Ellison. We learn of his difficult childhood, his man, the artist, all of the selves that Ellison, like his site essays, collected in Shadow and Act (1964) struggles to matriculate at Tuskegee and pay for his famous character Rinehart, inhabited, rings true, and and Going to the Territories (1985), while trying education, his failed first marriage, affairs, problem the reader is amply rewarded. It makes you almost to write a second novel. Rampersad not only pro- with drink, even his constant stomach troubles. One want to give Arnold Rampersad a call. vides illuminating glimpses into Ellison’s writing might cringe when she reads that “[w]hile black process—Kenneth Burke and Stanley Hyman were youths hungered for leadership, the most honored influential peers and readers—he provides sound living black American novelist had no young black readings of the novel itself, especially its American disciples, students, or friends.” Yet we also learn of Thomas S. Williams edits Arkansas Review: A Jour- Renaissance influences and symbolic construction, his deep and great friendships with Albert Murray and nal of Delta Studies.

De s e r t Cr e s c e n d o Rochelle Ratner

saw him with the woman and assume the worst its unknown conclusion in this darkness, doesn’t help matters. Boooorrrrring! I mean, it’s a and each man plays his role. Nothing is story I’ve heard a hundred times, and Twomey seems coincidence, not when you have found A Pa ss i o n i n t h e De s e r t surprisingly naïve. Had I not agreed to review this your True Will and the Nuctemeron: Light Thomas E. Kennedy book, I’d have probably cashed it in after a chapter issuing from the darkness. There is only or two. synchronicity. Wordcraft of Oregon I’m glad I didn’t. This isn’t naivety, and it http://www.wordcraftoforegon.com Would a respected writer actually cull his title isn’t guilt. Readers have been introduced to a very 192 pages; paper, $15.00 from these intrusions? But here’s where the master troubled mind which only exposes itself slowly as stylist comes in. Gradually, the folklore takes on the book progresses (and a brother’s suicide under- a more contemporary feel. This is something re- scores everything else that happens). Not mad, not sembling a commune. We realize this is a younger desperate, just troubled. Twomey. Names are dropped, particularly a woman’s The author of eleven novels, plus several books name. A baby is mentioned. Until finally, in chapter of essays and literary criticism, Thomas E. Kennedy’s Readers have been introduced to a 12, as Twomey sits with his wife, this shadow-self work had somehow eluded my vision until now, a very troubled mind which only merges with the contemporary story we’ve been fol- failure I intend to remedy in the near future by catch- exposes itself slowly as the book lowing. Pieces fit together. We begin to understand ing up on some of the novels I’ve missed. that this man’s torment is not one fling, not his dead Written in a brilliant style, A Passion in the progresses. brother, not the mother with Alzheimer’s, not what Desert can be deceptive. It begins as a fairly straight- he perceives as his deteriorating relationship with forward novel about an undervalued writer and Then, just as I was being sucked into the his son (the one named after his brother), not his academic off at a writers’ conference: drama, there’s an interlude between chapters entitled colleague, not anything we’ve been so craftily lead “Shadow King.” Reading like a scene out of some Montpelier is filled with writers. Across to suspect. There’s even a spoof of a mystery novel obscure folklore or primitive philosophy collection, the snowbound campus at the top of a here, though admittedly I figured it out by the middle it would seem to bear no relation to the rest of the of the book. steep hill, writers in winter garb, brightly story. It doesn’t even seem contemporary. Four pages, colored ski-suits, anoraks, army field “Reality catches up with you whether you then we’re back to the story itself. Then, a few chap- ignore it or not,” one of his best writing students jackets with fleece-lined hoods, walk to ters later there’s another interruption. Then, another. and fro from building to building, to at- says, citing a reference in her textbook. And here’s Another. All entitled “Shadow King,” all taking place yet another stylistic device Kennedy’s been using tend lectures, buy coffee, browse in the in some desert landscape: little bookshop. Twomey knows Montpee to perfection—the lectures of the teacher and his comments on student work offering cloaked insight and has promised Jeff Burns a tour of the Turns of fate. Yes. Existence as we into his past and present. The more you read that, the local bars after the last session today. He know it is full of sorrow. Every man is a condemned criminal only he does not more you want to read. has already delivered his own talk and know the hours of his execution. Words gave his reading, both of which went of the true master, the Great Beast, the Rochelle Ratner’s books include two novels and well, and all he really wants to do now true Shadow King. Yet the wheels grind sixteen poetry books. Her new novel, Mother and is have fun. with purpose. Every gesture, every move- Child, will be published in 2008 by Hamilton Stone He drinks too much and almost has a little fling. ment sets the scene, decides the course, Editions. More information and links to her work on He stops himself in time, but that does little to ease achieves the unknown schedule. The the Internet can be found on her homepage: http:// his conscience. And that a colleague and a student long process of evolution moves on to www.rochelleratner.com.

Page 6 L American Book Review Im p e r s o n al In t r u s i o n s Jean Braithwaite

You May Additionally Enjoy, Such as an Appendix.” (This turns out to be not a normal appendix but a final essay, one which takes as its subject Neck Deep and e c k e e p a n d t h e r r e d i c a m e n t s N D O P the non-fictionality thereof.) Ander Monson If you move obsessively, geekily through “Out- line Toward a Theory of the Mine Versus the Mind Graywolf Press and the Harvard Outline,” you’ll find a few structural http://www.graywolfpress.org anomalies, places where the strict hierarchy of the 214 pages; paper, $15.00 outline form is violated. These can be considered as technical blemishes or as poetic beauty marks or both (an open parenthesis at I.d doesn’t find its mate until fourteen horizontal layers below, buried five I won’t use the expression “tour de force” in hierarchical levels further in, at I.e.i.1.c.ii.1, where this review of Ander Monson’s essay collection the single word “elegance” then makes itself felt both Neck Deep and Other Predicaments, winner of the in its pinpoint locality and at the higher branching 2006 Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize. Wording like point, as well as contributing to the global themat- that could connote a slightness of substance behind ics). Also, and dismayingly at first, you’ll note the Monson’s dazzling acrobatic style, and that would be essay’s final line (“ii. back out—”) should, by strict quite unwarranted. With all their quirks and hijinks, algorithm, be labeled “iii.” Is this a typo? But surely these essays don’t just show off Monson’s sheer not, such is Monson’s care. A joke? Yes (and no). brain power but are also dense with real informa- Monson bends his formal rules to heighten, or rather tion, real feeling; indeed “hijinks,” while accurate, deepen, the emotional impact. Look: at III.f we have is insufficiently laudatory since the most formally “the metaphor of mining one’s past or childhood for innovative essays are also (in my humble opinion) writing material,” and at III.f.ii.2 “then there’s always among the deepest—the one in the form of an outline the possibility of being stuck, candle snuffed by a and the one where long lines of ellipses mimic the sudden blast,” and III.f.ii.3 “with no way of lighting be better still with just a little more bread-and-butter blanketing, hushing, gap-filling, surface-blurring, up again and no way”—and here the little spark at description of what the game of disc golf is like? For significance-magnifying action of snow—well, the the tip of the essay’s linear progress does get stuck, instance, the scarecrow size and look of the standing form and the function are co-evolved, so beautifully can’t find its way back up and out to III.f.iii but chain-and-basket contraptions that correspond to the symbiotic as to arouse awe and envy in other essay- remains trapped below at III.f.ii, where it smothers. holes in regular golf? The difference between slick ists: how I wish I’d thought of that first. Oh, and one I am almost, but not quite, sure this is the correct in- hard “drivers” and sticky flexible “putters”? Fearing other thing? I’m not going to mention this review terpretation. In any case, though I adore this brilliant, to seem pompous or dull, Monson rushes too quickly again, or intrude myself into it: this is not about me; ground-breaking essay, I anticipate that some readers past exposition that the uninitiated need. it’s about art. Right? might find it labyrinthine, too much effort. About that self-deprecating irony. In a recent Monson’s idiosyncratic essays often focus review, Lee Siegel refers to Dave Eggers as “the on seemingly frivolous subjects such as automatic sincere young father of post-postmodern half-irony— carwash facilities or disc-golf courses (“I can see Neck Deep should be read by anyone call it sincerony” (The New Republic, April 23, 2007). that there are pleasures in nearly everything if taken who cares about new developments in Sincerony isn’t a bad strategy for a personal essayist seriously enough”). And he zooms in sometimes to nonfiction. who, after all, has to put himself somewhere; it’s a a level of technical detail many might consider ex- buffer zone between the mockable extremes of a mag- cessive: “Admittedly everything is complicated, is Another essay in the form of an index (“Index isterial presence or a pretended absence of ego. Neck beautiful and intricate, infinitely recursive, when seen for X and the Origin of Fires”) gets my slightly re- Deep should be read by anyone who cares about new closely.” Monson’s appreciation for recursion and the luctant thumbs-down for (a) taking too many liber- close study of structure (the line comes from “I Have developments in nonfiction; I enjoyed it very much ties with conventions of indexing, (b) being opaque indeed (oops—oh, well, screw it); unless you have a Been Thinking About Snow”) lays down a base for a and inaccessible (it began as an index to Monson’s geeky ars poetica that moves me very much (oops, boundless appetite for sinceronic self-consciousness, novel Other Electricities [2005] but was cut), and though, parts may rub you wrong, and in that case I I slipped in after all). Another of my literary heroes in general (c) not fully justifying its gimmicks. Still (oops), David Foster Wallace, also exhibits an intel- wouldn’t recommend visiting Monson’s website at and all, there are flashes! Like Monson, I vividly http://www.otherelectricites.com/neckdeep to sample lectual appetite and obsessive attention to detail more remember reading Let Us Now Praise Famous Men his even less restrained self-commentary. In the final or less indistinguishable from aesthetic pleasure. (1941) (oops, there I go again). Just when I would essay (the “appendix”) of the printed Neck Deep, Wallace could have written that line (or I could, if begin to feel permanently alienated—“but really, Monson calls attention to the “artifice” of the book I’d gotten to it first [oops]); on the other hand, more man, this is only about your own turmoil, not the and admits to “methods of obfuscation.” “Perhaps it impersonal celebrators of high-resolution actual- sharecroppers at all,” or “look, I’m sorry, you just is strange to be remarking on the truth of one’s own ity such as John McPhee embody a similar nerdy can’t use a semicolon that way”—Agee would win nonfiction,” he notes. But finally: “What I am trying analytic drive and pleasure without ever (or anyway me back again with sheer raving passion, the gran- to tell you is this: in my own way, I love you. And only rarely) being compelled to articulate and defend deur and manic patience of his towering, exhaustive, you can trust me, mostly. I won’t lead, wouldn’t lead, the drive itself. Is McPhee less self-centered, or is word-perfect descriptions. haven’t led you wrong.” he simply more secure? Monson’s attraction to self- It so happens I have a slight familiarity with Yo, Monson. In my own way, dude, I love you referential looping is as strong as that of James Agee, disc golf (oops). But if I didn’t, I doubt I’d get quite too. I wish we were friends. Sincerely: I wouldn’t say whom he quotes approvingly, or Dave Eggers, whom as much out of “The Long Crush.” First, appreciate it if I didn’t mean it. Look me up and email me. he doesn’t mention but surely has read: an appendix Monson’s nicely-calibrated self-deprecation: to Neck Deep is titled: “Appendix: Parts of the Book When my wife cajoles me to make room for groceries in the trunk, I resist it. I can leave the jumper cables, the spare tire, or

Innovationab Never rSleeps the jack at home. How often do you need those, anyhow? I’ve got AAA. Clearly it Subscribe is necessary to be able to outfit up to ten today by friends who could conceivably join me for Jean Braithwaite writes and teaches creative nonfic- any given round at any moment with six tion at the University of Texas-Pan American, where discs each. This is simple courtesy. Clicking Here she directs the MFA program. She has published es- The essay is an intelligent, pleasurable meditation says in , The Sun, and various on human obsession, delightful even, but wouldn’t it other literary magazines.

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