{"id":804,"date":"2006-01-16T16:29:45","date_gmt":"2006-01-16T21:29:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lit-scrit\/"},"modified":"2006-01-16T16:29:45","modified_gmt":"2006-01-16T21:29:45","slug":"lit-scrit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/lit-scrit","title":{"rendered":"Lit Scrit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Official VM buddy Tina B. sends a neat article about the sheer messed-up-edness of contemporary academic writing about literature<\/a>. Here’s a piece: <\/p>\n

The problem is not just that literary scholarship has become disconnected from life. Something else more suspicious has happened to professional criticism in America over the past 30 years, and that is its love affair with reducing literature to ideas, to the author’s or reader’s intention or ideology \u00c3\u00a2\u00e2\u201a\u00ac\u00e2\u20ac\u009d not at all the same thing as art. As a result, literary critics are devoted to saving the world, not to saving literature for the world, and to internecine battles that make little sense outside academe.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Have fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Official VM buddy Tina B. sends a neat article about the sheer messed-up-edness of contemporary academic writing about literature. Here’s a piece: The problem is not just that literary scholarship has become disconnected from life. Something else more suspicious has happened to professional criticism in America over the past 30 years, and that is its … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Lit Scrit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4C7K-cY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3104,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/great-guns-great-books","url_meta":{"origin":804,"position":0},"title":"Great Guns, Great Books","author":"Gil","date":"December 21, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I think it's great that this article on how the discipline of literary studies has killed student interest in literature is by a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. Annapolis, [my students] tell me, is the place dreams come to die in the daily grind of shining\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Art"","block_context":{"text":"Art","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":514,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/to-the-editor","url_meta":{"origin":804,"position":1},"title":"To the editor","author":"Gil","date":"March 7, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"On March 7, the New York Times published an article entitled, \"Literary Novelists Address 9\/11, Finally\", on the occasion of several new novels about the attacks and their aftermath.Unfortunately, your writer seems not to have researched this matter well enough. In September 2003, I published Paul West's novel, \"The Immensity\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2606,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/pale-fire","url_meta":{"origin":804,"position":2},"title":"Pale Fire","author":"Gil","date":"October 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Adam Kirsch, my favorite book critic at the now-defunct New York Sun, has landed at Slate. It doesn't say if he's going to have a regular spot there, but I hope that's the case. I also hope he's given as much range in his assignments as he was at the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":948,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/25-years-huh","url_meta":{"origin":804,"position":3},"title":"25 years, huh?","author":"Gil","date":"May 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"A few months ago, I wrote an insanely rambling piece about the crappy state of contemporary literature. In that post, I mentioned a conversation I had with an NYU prof (Elayne Tobin) and an author\/critic (David Gates) about what novels since 1980 will become \"canonical.\" We had slim pickings, supporting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2760,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/f-you-you-whining-f-102508","url_meta":{"origin":804,"position":4},"title":"F*** You, You Whining F***: 10\/25\/08","author":"Gil","date":"October 25, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"I suppose a disproportionate number of these F*** You posts are going to come from the literary world. I just have a great deal of pissed-off with regards to people who think book publishing could be a utopian wonderworld if publishers would just stop caring about making money. Don't get\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "F*** You, You Whining F***"","block_context":{"text":"F*** You, You Whining F***","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/f-you-you-whining-f"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1446,"url":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/unrequired-reading-apr-13-2007","url_meta":{"origin":804,"position":5},"title":"Unrequired Reading: Apr. 13, 2007","author":"Gil","date":"April 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's my weekly round up links I didn't have the time or inclination to write about! It's the 21 biggest high-tech flops! * * * Heroin: a gateway to pancakes. * * * What makes \"literary fiction\" better than \"regular ol' novels\"? Michael Blowhard opines on the misconceptions of literary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "literature"","block_context":{"text":"literature","link":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/category\/literature"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/804\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/chimeraobscura.com\/vm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}