The Performing Self

Fülszöveg

THE
PERFORMING SELF
Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life
RICHARD POIRIER
A radical critique of contemporary forms— in literature and the teaching of literature, in contemporary culture and prevalent ways of analyzing it—the nine essays in Richard Poirier's new book share a common concern: "to reclaim the energy of human performance from the humanistic and liberal traditions that have all but smothered it."
To expose the constraints of familiar, therefore largely unquestioned, expressive modes, Mr. Poirier calls attention to certain disturbing elements which, if allowed proper recognition, might alter the achieved designs of literature, society, and systems of inteipretation. Included, with considerable revision, are such influential pieces as "The War against the Young," "Learning from the Beatles," and "The Literature of Waste." And there are extended discussions of a number of writers, from Andrew Marvell to Norman Mailer, who have... Tovább

Fülszöveg

THE
PERFORMING SELF
Compositions and Decompositions in the Languages of Contemporary Life
RICHARD POIRIER
A radical critique of contemporary forms— in literature and the teaching of literature, in contemporary culture and prevalent ways of analyzing it—the nine essays in Richard Poirier's new book share a common concern: "to reclaim the energy of human performance from the humanistic and liberal traditions that have all but smothered it."
To expose the constraints of familiar, therefore largely unquestioned, expressive modes, Mr. Poirier calls attention to certain disturbing elements which, if allowed proper recognition, might alter the achieved designs of literature, society, and systems of inteipretation. Included, with considerable revision, are such influential pieces as "The War against the Young," "Learning from the Beatles," and "The Literature of Waste." And there are extended discussions of a number of writers, from Andrew Marvell to Norman Mailer, who have "de-created" given and repressive artistic structures in order to redefine their components and make room for new ones.
Mr. Poirier argues that any significant expression of the self, be it of a writer like Robert Frost or of a corporate self like "youth," is vulnerable to existent forms of art and reality: if it chooses to dismpt these
it must also take the full risk of being disrupted by them. He investigates the degree to which certain writers, from Melville through Joyce and Eliot and on to Pynchon and his contemporaries, have taken the risk of self-parody and of welcoming into their works seemingly recalcitrant materials—they have opened literature to realms of expression often thought uncongenial or possibly antithetical to literary shapings. Writing, he insists, is an activity the energy of which cannot be accounted for within the organizations the reader, or even the author, try to give it: "structure may even be thought of as an element against which the writer is performing."
Strenuous attention to styles of expression, Mr. Poirier demonstrates, may help to unify literary, cultural, and social analysis. He reveals how certain kinds of performance in literature have been ignored in favor of others that are more easily translated into dominant moral, psychological, or cultural assumptions. He extends his inquiry, also, to institutions which tend, in much the same way, to exclude and repress emergent social or cultural forces. In making these connections between literary issues, on the one hand, and broad cultural and social realities, on the other, he is nonetheless wary of the one-dimensional thinking and false clarifications of what he calls sentimental radicalism.
These challenging and controversial essays, original in concept, filled with vital concerns and uncompromising, tough-minded argument, raise disturbing questions about customary ways of thinking and about the future of civilized discourse.
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