tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post3803582275535061892..comments2024-01-26T17:29:53.415-05:00Comments on Reader's Almanac: T. S. Eliot and literary culture: Dare we ask, “What is it?”The Library of Americahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17586915922688562543noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post-15786592641111946722010-11-18T14:56:54.736-05:002010-11-18T14:56:54.736-05:00It's hard to say what the future holds. Keep i...It's hard to say what the future holds. Keep in mind though that while anyone can recognize a period of decline, no can see a golden age until it's over. Sometimes one masquerades as the other. None of the novelists in mid-19th Century America likely thought they were setting the standard for American culture for years to come. God knows they didn't get the recognition they deserved in their lifetime.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16762495483918721103noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post-50500044553467063912010-11-18T13:47:12.277-05:002010-11-18T13:47:12.277-05:00RW: I probably could have focused more on young wr...RW: I probably could have focused more on young writers, that's true. Terrance Hayes, Juliana Spahr, Tim Donnelly, AE Stallings, Ainge Mlinko, Ben Mazer, John Kinsella, Ashley Anna McHugh, Kazim Ali, DA Powell are all younger. I just finished Stephen Sturgeon's first book in manuscript (out from Dark Sky in Spring 2011), and it was astounding — so, there's a recommendation. As for critics: have you read The Critical Flame (www.criticalflame.org)? The Quarterly Conversation (quarterlyconversation.com)?<br /><br />Things absolutely look different today. Media has had a whole-hog revolution, splitting the generations. The median age of America is at its highest point and rising. Young people — who in the 1960s looked ahead toward promise and progress and affluence — now will spend their lives toiling to get out from decades of failed policies. We will fight a long global war against radicalism. The business model of literary culture is failing; education has become a business; literary culture has been marginalized by those with political and profit motives.<br /><br />It's not shocking that we have not been eager to replicate the culture that was handed down. But short of talent and intellect we are not, and we will not fail.Daniel Pritchardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02171613044501024248noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-256801828148573136.post-82374992311027950842010-11-18T12:39:17.278-05:002010-11-18T12:39:17.278-05:00I can't access Commentary so I'm only goin...I can't access Commentary so I'm only going to respond to what is excerpted here -- but no, I don't think Epstein is far off the mark, and I have to give Library of America some credit for making me think that way.<br /><br />I've been reading here and there in the two Edmund Wilson volumes, and you have to wonder: where is today's Wilson? Harold Bloom and James Wood maybe. Look at all the great critics from the past, the ones who were so engaged with American life and culture: Mary McCarthy, James Agee, Dwight MacDonald, Philip Rahv, Malcolm Cowley, Matthew Josephson, Alfred Kazin, Mark van Doren, Susan Sontag. The list goes on and on. Look at all those names and try coming up with a comparable crowd in terms of insight, intelligence and achievement. You cannot do it.<br /><br />Granted, this was all a little before my time, but even when I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, there was at least some kind of a book culture going on, and average people had some sense of == as Epstein said regarding Einstein -- writers who were for some reason famous, like Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Saul Bellow and John Updike. People may not have read them but they knew who they were. Today, that kind of interest has been shifted to the margins.<br /><br />The posts from Pritchard and Nathan are not encouraging, because the most relevant writers and critics they refer to are senior citizens or close to it. Take away the big names and it's a very thin crowd, isn't it?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16762495483918721103noreply@blogger.com