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Volume 29, Issue 3

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Volume 29, Issue 3 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 THE RO BERT BELLAH READER Chandler Brossard Duke University Press Edited by Steven Moore OVER THE RAINB O W ? HARDLY : “Bellah’s failure to fit snugly the pigeonholes of traditionalism, CO LLE C TED SH O RT SEIZURE S modernism, 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 RAL P H ELLI so N : A BI O GRA P HY Bryan Brower reviews Paul Ruffin Knopf THE SEG O VIA CHR O NI C LE 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 IN THE DE S ERT Sascha Pöhlmann reviews Günter Grass Wordcraft of Oregon Translated by Michael Henry Heim “Readers have been introduced to PEELING THE ONI 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 DEE P AND Tracy Daugherty reviews THER REDI C AMENT S Vincent Craig Wright O P Graywolf Press REDEM P TI O N CENTER 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 THE LOGIC OF T HE AN T I -A ES T HE T IC John W. Maerhofer authorial intelligibility, an indication of the “schizo- phrenic” nature of the anti-aesthetic model which OVER THE RAINB O W ? HARDLY : became central to his work: “I’m always surprised CO LLE C TED SH O RT SEIZURE 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 HUMB L E ORIGINS Bryan Brower divided into two parts (“From the Front Porch” and “The People and the Land”) with the third part consisting of a single THE SEG O VIA CHR O NI C LE S short story about a man returning home Paul Ruffin to die.
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