Hurray for Tom McCarthy's top 10 European modernists list. Who could imagine Blanchot getting an unfatuous mention in a national daily newspaper? Yet here is one. Thanks be given to Tom McCarthy (and the editor who didn't insist on a replacement). Maybe a reader will be inspired to drop On Chesil Beach and to pick up The Writing of the Disaster instead.
I have to agree with the statement that "Modernism is not a movement, nor even a way of thinking, but an event: an event with which any serious writer has, in some way or another, to engage, and to which they should respond." But. Always a but. But my list would coincide only with said Blanchot, Beckett, Kafka, Celan and Heidegger. I would replace the remaining five with Benjamin, Proust, Borges, Kierkegaard and ... Dante. The event is eternal, interminable.
Notice: two philosophers, two novelists, two poets, two short story writers, two literary critics. Modernism trespasses.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Blogroll, etc.
Blogroll continued
- Flowerville
- Cannon Magazine
- Wittgenstein Jr
- Danny Byrne
- Marooned Off Vesta
- In lieu of a field guide
- Just William's Luck
- Vertigo (WG Sebald blog)
- Tales from the Reading Room
- The Goalie's Anxiety
- Infinite Patience
- Pechorin's Journal
- Time's Flow Stemmed
- 50 Watts
- The Philosophical Worldview Artist
- Known Unknowns
- The Age of Uncertainty
- Being in Lieu
- ads without products
- Rejectamentalist Manifesto
- TLS editors' blog
- Braingrass
- Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
- The Bibliophilic Blogger
- Nomadics
- Life Unfurnished
Favoured author sites
Political
Blog Archive
- April 2013 (1)
- March 2013 (2)
- February 2013 (1)
- January 2013 (1)
- November 2012 (2)
- August 2012 (1)
- July 2012 (1)
- June 2012 (1)
- May 2012 (3)
- March 2012 (3)
- February 2012 (1)
- January 2012 (1)
- November 2011 (1)
- October 2011 (2)
- September 2011 (2)
- July 2011 (3)
- June 2011 (1)
- May 2011 (3)
- April 2011 (5)
- March 2011 (3)
- February 2011 (1)
- January 2011 (2)
- December 2010 (7)
- November 2010 (1)
- October 2010 (5)
- September 2010 (2)
- August 2010 (3)
- July 2010 (4)
- June 2010 (2)
- May 2010 (3)
- April 2010 (4)
- March 2010 (11)
- February 2010 (3)
- December 2009 (3)
- November 2009 (5)
- October 2009 (5)
- September 2009 (3)
- August 2009 (6)
- July 2009 (6)
- June 2009 (4)
- May 2009 (8)
- April 2009 (8)
- March 2009 (12)
- February 2009 (11)
- January 2009 (7)
- December 2008 (7)
- November 2008 (7)
- October 2008 (17)
- September 2008 (7)
- August 2008 (8)
- July 2008 (7)
- June 2008 (7)
- May 2008 (7)
- April 2008 (5)
- March 2008 (8)
- February 2008 (2)
- January 2008 (10)
- December 2007 (26)
- November 2007 (28)
- October 2007 (16)
- September 2007 (24)
- August 2007 (15)
- July 2007 (17)
- June 2007 (11)
- May 2007 (23)
- April 2007 (11)
- March 2007 (24)
- February 2007 (27)
- January 2007 (21)
- December 2006 (9)
- November 2006 (23)
- October 2006 (21)
- September 2006 (19)
- August 2006 (15)
- July 2006 (33)
- June 2006 (17)
- May 2006 (24)
- April 2006 (17)
- March 2006 (18)
- February 2006 (15)
- January 2006 (8)
- December 2005 (8)
- November 2005 (10)
- October 2005 (7)
- September 2005 (14)
- August 2005 (14)
- July 2005 (8)
- June 2005 (15)
- May 2005 (11)
- April 2005 (12)
- March 2005 (9)
- February 2005 (7)
- January 2005 (15)
- December 2004 (2)
- November 2004 (4)
- October 2004 (6)
- September 2004 (2)
Followers
Subscribe to This Space
Posts
Comments
Shakespeare friend. And because we do: Homer!
ReplyDeleteThe Hood Company
I would agree with fourteen of the writers mentioned, but Heidegger? It's nonsense. To think of Heidegger as the inheritor of Plato is to dimiinish Plato to those aspects of his work that were obscurantist and politically reprehensible. It's also to elevate by assocaition someone who just wasn't a very good philosopher.
ReplyDeleteYou don't find this categorising of literature as Modernist a bit irrelevant? If we can say someone is a Modernist they become more exalted? Imposing silly categories upon literature. "Now I am reading Kafka, I am readnig a great Modernist text. Now I am reading de Lampedusa, I am not reading a Modernist text. Now I am reading Dante, I am again reading a Modernist text. Now I am reading Shakespeare, etc." It all strikes me as a kind of silly exercise in pointless categorising.
ReplyDelete"You don't find this categorising of literature as Modernist a bit irrelevant?"
ReplyDeleteYes.
But I was bored and it's a bit of fun and someone like me 20 years ago would have used it to explore the library rather than picking up the latest "The Adjective of Noun" novel by Sophie Wannabe-Newsnight-Review-panellist.
"The Love of Success"?
ReplyDeleteWell, I spose we all tend to love a list.
ReplyDeleteHuman Being: Two legged mammal which enjoys making and debating of lists.
Yes. I should point out that Borges is ineligible, not being European. D'oh!
ReplyDelete