I've enjoyed two books by Malcolm Gladwell (while recognizing their deficiencies), so when I saw that he had written an article "The Enron Enigma" for The New Yorker I bought the 7 January issue to read on a recent train ride.
Wow, it isn't what I want to read.
The Enron article can be boiled down to this: "The financial mischief at the heart of the Enron scandal was so complicated, nobody except an expert can understand it. Therefore we can't be sure it was criminal." This is so fatuous and excusatory it's offensive.
What I found astonishingly irritating was Milan Kundera's article "Die Weltliteratur" (not online). Kundera's points are that national literatures differ depending on whether their nation is powerful or weak, and the idea of national literature is and always was foolish and impossible. The thing is, I come from a science background. Kundera supports his arguments with at most two examples of writers from each nation in question. (Exception: more than two French writers are mentioned.) That is, to use the literary device of litotes, a very small statistical sample and just vitiates his whole argument. Also, as a student of history, I'd have liked to see an analysis of a nation's literature changing as its role in the world did, for instance Prussia going from minor to world power, or France degenerating from Napoleon's Europe-spanning empire to its present second-rate power status. Never seems to have occurred to Kundera.
One passage stands out as indicating Kundera's almost bizarrely elitist stance. Referring to the Icelandic sagas, he says, "I don't mean to say that the sagas have been forgotten—after centuries of indifference they are now being studied in universities throughout the world—but they belong to the 'archeology of letters,' they do not influence living literature." I have personally read over one dozen novels written in the past five years influenced by the Icelandic sagas. What Kundera means, without even knowing it, is "do not influence the type of literature Milan Kundera reads." "Living" literature is much more the sort of genre fiction he disdains than his own work, but of course admitting that would be ego-fatal.
It's all like that. David Denby's "Big Pictures" analyzes the problems of Hollywood in remarkably trite and obvious ways. I never go to the movies and don't care much, but even I know that DVDs represent a challenge to theaters, that funding anything innovative is hard because the studios are owned by large companies that want guaranteed return, and that targeted marketing is ending the era of movies for everyone, in favor of movies aimed at under-30 males, or married couples, or whatever. There isn't a single new thing in the entire very long essay. And again, Denby tries to support huge points by interviewing one person and citing no facts.
Exception: the article by Joan Acocella on Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart's best-known librettist, was fascinating even though I hate opera. Factual, well-researched, and without huge doses of Acocella's own opinions. I enjoyed it.
But in general, I don't recommend The New Yorker.
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7 comments:
I find it a little ironic that you are ripping the New Yorker (the magazine, the institution) for its presumably narrow sourcebase, based on your reading of a *single* issue. To boil down your argument: I didn't like many of the articles in this issue because I have a scientific background and disagreed with some of their contentions, therefore the magazine is pretentious and fallacious. To each his or her own, but perhaps your disapproval of this issue and therefore of the magazine itself, comes from a differing disciplinary perspective. You had certain expectations, the magazine did not meet them, and so, you conclude, it's bad.
If you read more issues of the New Yorker, you may come to appreciate its particular brand of writing on its own terms. If not, at least you would not be commiting the same sampling error you attribute to the magazine.
sincerely, Nathan D. Wood
Well, almost. Not because I disagree with the contentions so much as because I found the entire style of argument laughably unpersuasive. I agree with at least half of what I read, especially Denby's piece, but he didn't prove his points at all.
I brought up my background precisely because I thought my "differing disciplinary perspective" was responsible for my reaction. Now, I happen to think that to be persuasive, an argument needs more support than "one writer did this" or "one producer said that", but Gladwell or Kundera is welcome to disagree.
I never said the New Yorker was "bad". I wrote that it isn't something I want to read, which it is not.
It's Kundera's conscious choice of style not to really care about proving what he says, as he states himself in his books. I am not really sure whether this is because he believes proving is boring or impossible (and, let's face it, it often is), but his whole point is this: He 's not interested in proving, he's interested in making us (himself, too) think!
Whatever Kundera says is never 100% true (what is?!), neither does he want it to be.
Anyway, I found the related part very interesting, to say the least, but of course it's OK to disagree.
PS. BTW, I come from a science background, too.
I find the New Yorker spotty enough that I don't subscribe.
I "skim" and if I find an article that grips me - there are some - I buy.
An article they ran about two years ago about Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers was incredibly brilliant and informative and worth many times the purchase price.
(Among those few who have survived, ALL cite their first thought at jumping from the bridge as being the same:
"Oh, I wish I hadn't done that.")
However, I post to regret to announce that you are not allowed to criticized anything Milan Kundera writes about anything, ever, in perpetuity, because he wrote "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting" and "The Unbearable Lightness of Being".
At least, that was always my college roommate's hysterical stance whenever Kundera, and criticism of anything he wrote, came up. Ever.
She had goldfish named Tomas and Sabina.
One night she locked herself into the bathroom and threatened to do harm to herself unless we stopped criticizing some article Kundera had written.
A. I am not making this up.
B. She is not unique among...Kunderaphiles(?).
She went on to become a high-school English Lit teacher.
Scary.
ronnie
I prefer "Immortality", myself :)
Ronnie, let me express my condolences for having a literally committable college roommate. (At least under both New York and Florida law. Dunno about Canada.)
I've never actually read any of Kundera's fiction, so I have no opinion there.
I think as an SF fan, I was especially irritated by Kundera's dismissing most of the fiction I do read as either non-living or nonexistent.
It's true Kundera is not trying to 'prove' something, and he's writing a
'free' essay, not an academic study.
Still, I was irritated by the article for the reasons you state and more. It is very old hat, although some people still may need to hear the points he makes, and pretty limited.
Going over old old ground one more time, without renovation ...
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