Chekhov's Mistress

More on Theory

by Bud Parr

This was posted by Scott Esposito of “Conversational Reading“

The title to Bud’s post on theory has made his feelings abundantly clear ("Throw Out The Damn Theory And Just Read (or Write) Already"). I actually happen to like theory. Not that it’s a ball to drudge through Derrida, (I’m definitely not smart enough to quickly get through someone like him) but there are certain pleasures.

For one thing, because theory can be so darn difficult to read, it really feels like something when it all actually clicks together in your mind. It’s sort of like that moment when you have a really great idea (e.g. "What if I moved the TV to the other side of the living room!"), but it’s more than just that, because when you do finally catch on you’ve probably struggled through 50-some pages of murky prose and you’re jubilant that you’ve gotten a foothold. If you’re like me, at that point you’ll double-underline the entire passage, put a star in the margin, and probably make some notes in your Moleskine so that you never forget what you read through 50 pages of Baudrillard to figure out.

What does this have to do with literature? Well, nothing really. I’ve enjoyed books long before I was competent at pomo theorists, and I read plenty of books that never once make me think of the likes of Foucault or Jameson. I tend to approach theory like I approach any good knowledge that can be brought to bear on a book—it’s there to help spur thoughts and make connections, but I don’t see why it needs to be treated with such privileged status.

For instance, when I was reading Gaddis, I was very often reminded of Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. That essay provided lots of ideas that I could draw on and link to what Gaddis was doing. But, also when reading Gaddis, I was reminded of such things as Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, certain parties I have gone to, the literature of Umberto Eco, and museums I’ve visited.

My point here is that reading Benjamin made me a better reader of Gaddis, but so did going to some lively parties. And I didn’t need to have a very thorough knowledge of Benjamin to be able to apply his insights to Gaddis—I’ve read his essay a couple times, but I’m hardly a specialist, and I wouldn’t want to be, because when I was reading Gaddis, it was for the Gaddis Drinking Club, and I don’t htink anyone there would have appreciated a thorough, technical, theoretical analysis of Gaddis w/r/t Benjamin (I know I wouldn’t have).

In lieu of theoretical responses to literature, I’d much rather see intelligent, personal responses. You can find these on many of the best litblogs, and you can also find it in Richard Klein’s Cigarettes are Sublime. (Which I blogged about here, here, and here.) This book was one of the best works of lit crit of the 1990s, and it gets taught all the time, but it relies very little on theory. There is some, to be sure, but it’s not the frightening kind of Ph.D. dissertation-speak. It’s all very readable, and in place of excessive theory, Klein gives us a very personal response to various works that have featured cigarettes prominently.

In effect, I think CAS-type stuff is what I’d like to write, and what I like to read. It’s intelligent and knows about theory, but it doesn’t elevate theory to some pedestal where it magnificently surveys the literature below it. I also happen to think that this approach to theory is well within the bounds of anyone intelligent enough to engage good literature regularly. I’ll even go so far as to say that books like Foucault for Beginners are totally okay ways to get a workable understanding of theory good enough to apply it to what you read.

After all, unless you’re some professor churning out papers for the MLA, all this stuff should be for your enjoyment. Theory can be enjoyable, as I hope I’ve conveyed, just so long as you don’t lose track of why you’re attempting to understand it.

And one other thing. Theory has done a lot to help me understand this world I live in, just as has literature, and I’d really not rather debate which has done more for the collective human understanding of the world, or whatever. I don’t even know how I would compare the two. See who had more prophesies realized, Pynchon or Baudrillard? See who was the first to correctly describe the logic of late capitalism?

Honestly, I don’t know and I don’t really care. No matter whay anyone might say about the superiority of theory, I’m convinced that both novelists and theorists are necessary in understanding this world.

Let me just close with this: Some of the very best novels I’ve read, theory-wise, have been pretty shitty as literature, but have still managed to be far more readable then theory on its best day. And although lots of theorists I’ve read have been amazingly cerebral and strikingly clinical and precise in their appraisals of soceity, they tell me about as much about the actual substance of reality as does the chemical structure of blood tell me about this gooey red stuff that I occasionaly see when I scrape my shin.

posted April 15, 2005

comments

“when I was reading Gaddis, it was for the Gaddis Drinking Club, and I don’t htink anyone there would have appreciated a thorough, technical, theoretical analysis of Gaddis w/r/t Benjamin”

Oh, I would have!

I have a bunch of those For Beginners/Introduction books and they are quite useful for grasping concepts and terminology. Particularly as an introduction to reading the actual work.

    – derik (04/15  at  06:13 PM)


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