Sameer Pattnayak itibaren Montfermy, France

sameerptnk

05/07/2024

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Sameer Pattnayak Kitabın yeniden yazılması (11)

2019-07-16 17:40

Kurt Oyunu Oynayalım Mı? TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi

Tarafından yazılmış kitap Tarafından: Remzi Kitabevi

I was concerned Macdonald's stance would be so elitist it would feel very dated. But the essay for which he's most famous, Masscult and Midcult, is actually very readable still, and I found myself agreeing with a lot of it. The book's title is somewhat misleading - "the effects of mass culture" aren't really the topic here, as Macdonald mostly (fortunately) ignores television and music. These are essays about books. Along with Masscult and Midcult, the best essays here are on Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, and a long-forgotten novelist, James Gould Cozzens, and his bestselling 1957 book By Love Possessed. Although there seems to be little point in brushing up on one's Cozzens expertise, the essay is relevant because Macdonald tries to explain how such a terrible novel (absolutely unreadable, judging by the excerpts he provides) got so many rave reviews even from some fairly respected and learned critics. It's actually very easy to see the same thing happening today. The quality of the essays seemed to fall off toward the end of the book, or perhaps they just didn't age well, and I skimmed the ones on Amateur Journalism, "Howtoism" (about how-to books), and America's love of facts. This excerpt from the Hemingway essay seems spot-on to me, and gives an idea of what I consider Macdonald's best writing: [Hemingway's] one talent was aesthetic - a feeling for style, in his writing and his life, that was remarkably sure. But the limits of aestheticism unsupported by thought or feeling are severe. Hemingway made one big, original stylistic discovery - with the aid of Gertrude Stein - but when he had gotten everything there was to be gotten out of it (and a bit more) he was unable...to invent anything else... Hemingway's opposites are Stendhal and Tolstoy - interesting he should feel especially awed by them - who had no style at all, no effects. Stendhal wrote the way a police sergeant would write if police sergeants had imagination - a dry, matter-of-fact style. Tolstoy's writing is clear and colorless, interposing no barrier between the reader and the narrative, the kind of direct prose, businesslike and yet Olympian, that one imagines the Recording Angel uses for entries in his police blotter. There is no need for change or innovation with such styles. But the more striking and original a style is, the greater such necessity. Protean innovators like Joyce and Picasso invent, exploit, and abandon dozens of styles; Hemingway had only one. It was not enough.

Okuyucu Sameer Pattnayak itibaren Montfermy, France

Kullanıcı, bu kitapları portalın yayın kurulu olan 2017-2018'de en ilginç olarak değerlendirdi "TrendKitaplar Kütüphanesi" Tüm okuyucuların bu literatürü tanımalarını tavsiye eder.