Some Sociopolitical Literary Criticism Excerpts

 

EXCERPTS: 1800s-2003 

From Works on Political, Social, and Cultural Criticism of Imaginative Literature
(with an emphasis on the nature and role of propaganda)

 

note: I agree with much but not everything I’ve chosen to excerpt. As far as the books as a whole go – as they seem to me – many are very good, plenty are solid, some are mixed, some are less insightful or unfortunate in part. On the whole, in my judgment, the books make some thoughtful and useful exploration of imaginative literature and its relation to society, individuals and social and political change.

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PDF OF GREATLY EXPANDED BIBLIOGRAPHY AND EXCERPTS

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1864 – Victor Hugo, William Shakespeare
1883 –William Morris, On Art and Socialism
1885, 1888 –Frederick Engels, Letters
1898 –Leo Tolstoy, What is Art?
1903 –Frank Norris, The Responsibilities of the Novelist 
1905 –Vladimir Lenin, “Party Organization and Party Literature,” in Novaia Jizn
1924 –Upton Sinclair, Mammonart: An Essay in Economic Interpretation
1926 –W.E.B. DuBois, African American Literary Criticism, 1773-2000
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1928 –Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda
1931 –Edmund Wilson, Axel’s Castle
1932 –V. F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature
1934 –John Dewey, Art as Experience
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  Sequence of relatively recent literary commercial essays on the social novel:

  1961 – Philip Roth, “Writing American Fiction,” Commentary, March, 1961 (also in Reading
              Myself and Others, 1985)
  1989 – Tom Wolfe, “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast,” Harpers, 1989
  1995 – Jane Smiley, “Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s ‘Masterpiece’,” 
              Harpers, December 1995
  1996 – Jonathan Franzen, “Perchance to Dream,” Harpers, 1996 [Revised, retitled as “Why
              Bother?” in How to Be Alone, 2002]
  2001 – James Wood, “Human, All Too Inhuman,” The New Republic, August 30, 2001;
              “Abhorring a Vacuum,” The New Republic, October 18, 2001

 

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Bibliography – 1800s to 2003            
Critical Excerpts – 1883 to 2003 
Quick Views    
Social and Political Novel  
Social and Political Literature  

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Bibliographies of Sociopolitical Literary Criticism

EXPLORATIONS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SOCIETY AND IMAGINATIVE LITERATURE (FICTION, POETRY, DRAMA, CREATIVE NON-FICTION – ALSO FILM, MUSIC, CARTOONS, AND ART IN GENERAL).

BIBLIOGRAPHY – 1800s TO TODAY
A listing primarily of books of political, social and cultural criticism on imaginative literature, the novel in particular – some landmarks and assorted works, mainly American and English – a truncated and otherwise incomplete chronology. A few texts on novel form and technique are also included.

BIBLIOGRAPHIES – PARTICULAR
The general bibliographic list broken into several groupings, including lists of: “propaganda” titles; “social change” titles; “politic”… titles; assorted anthologies of literary criticism; assorted interview collections;  encyclopedias and other reference volumes; and key works on propaganda (public relations) and the public.

CRITICAL EXCERPTS
From works on political, social, and cultural criticism of imaginative literature, with an emphasis on the nature and role of propaganda.

 

ABOUT THE BIBLIOGRAPHIES AND EXCERPTS

These partial bibliographies explore imaginative literature and literary criticism and social change, and in particular how the former two can contribute to the latter. These lists and excerpts are designed for, among others, activists and scholars, students and teachers, and readers and writers of literature who work for social change.

The lists of works on society and imaginative literature are rough and ready. I did not undertake a comprehensive search for criticism on imaginative literature and its social relationship, because I don’t know how to do it and I don’t think it’s possible – there is a tremendous amount of information available from a wide variety of sources.

I don’t necessarily agree with everything I’ve chosen to excerpt, and as far as the books go – as they seem to me – many are very good, plenty are solid, some are mixed, some are less insightful or unfortunate, and some are not very socially focused at all. On the whole, in my judgment, the books make some thoughtful and useful exploration of imaginative literature and its relation to society, as well as to individuals.
For more explanation about the bibliographies and excerpts, their context and critical tradition with its roots in the Enlightenment, see the lengthy excerpt of Edmund Wilson’s article “The Historical Interpretation of Literature“; also see these early books on the subject: VF Calverton’s The Liberation of American Literature, Bernard Smith’s Forces in American Criticism, Kenneth Burke’s The Philosophy of Literary Form, and Vernon Louis Parrington’s Main Currents in American Thought, among many others.
 
 
 
 

 

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Bibliography – 1800s to 2003            
Critical Excerpts – 1883 to 2003 
Quick Views    
Social and Political Novel  
Social and Political Literature  

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SOME SOCIAL and POLITICAL NOVEL TYPES

 

Though certain types of novels such as “psychological” novels and bildungsromans may most commonly focus on private rather than social or public realms of life, to some extent every novel is a social–or political–novel. Novels that are intensively focused on social forces and public domains appear in many types and are known by many names. It is impossible to classify absolutely any particular novel as a single type, since virtually all novels and works of literature contain a variety of categorical features; nevertheless, classifications and descriptions are useful for thinking about particular works, even if precise definitions of many classifications are not universally or even widely agreed upon.

[Also, see some conventional defintions, below list.]

political novel
governmental novel

tendentious novel

tendenzroman

roman à these
thesis novel

didactic novel

ideological novel

novel with a purpose

authoritarian novel

committed novel

novel of engagement

littérature engagée

engagé novel

proletarian novel

Marxist novel

materialist novel
radical novel
allegorical novel

revolutionary novel

anti-war novel

futuristic novel

speculative novel

utopian novel

dystopian novel

culturally critical novel

problem novel

propaganda novel

realistic novel

naturalistic novel

picaresque

novel of ideas
protest novel

historical novel

socialist novel

anarchist novel

social protest novel
social mystery/crime novel

social satire

social morality novel

social philosophy novel
etc…

 

from A Handbook to Literature, Eighth Edition, Harmon and Holman, Eds., 2000:

 

PROPAGANDA: Material propagated for the purpose of advocating a political or ideological position; also the mechanism for such propaganda. Earlier, in European use, propaganda carried a positive or neutral sense of “distributing information” or “advertising”; since about 1930, however, the connotations have become increasingly negative. [If the PROPAGANDA link fails, click here, then click “Public relations bookshelf.”]

 

PROPAGANDA NOVEL: A novel dealing with a special social, political, economic, or moral issue or problem and possibly advocating a doctrinaire solution. If the propagandistic purpose dominates the work so as to dwarf or eclipse all other elements, such as plot and character, then the novel belongs to the realm of the didactic and probably cannot be understood or appreciated for its own sake as a work of art. It may be good propaganda and bad literature at the same time. William Godwin’s Things as They Are: or The Adventures of Caleb Williams (1794) is an early example. See PROBLEM NOVEL. 

 

PROBLEM NOVEL: A narrative that derives its chief interest from working out some central problem. The term is sometimes applied to those novels written for a deliberate purpose or thesis, which are better called PROPOGANDA NOVELS. Because human character is the subject matter surest to interest readers and because human kind is constantly confronted by the problems of life and conduct, it follows that the problem novel – when it is thought of as a story with a purpose rather than for a purpose – is fairly common. The REALISTIC NOVEL, centered as it is in social setting, has often employed social issues as the cruxes of its plots. This matter of illustrating a problem by showing people confronted thereby is at the core of the problem novel.PROBLEM PLAY: Like PROBLEM NOVEL, its analogue in nondramatic fiction, this term is used both in a broad sense to cover all serious drama in which problems of human life are presented as such, for example, Shakespeare’s King Lear, and in a more specialized sense to designate the modern “drama of ideas,” as exemplified in the plays of Ibsen, Shaw, Galsworthy, and many others. It is most commonly used in the latter sense, and here it means the representation in dramatic form of a general social problem or issue, shown as it is confronted by the protagonist.
 

 

 

 

 

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Bibliography – 1800s to 2003            
Critical Excerpts – 1883 to 2003 
Quick Views    
Social and Political Novel  
Social and Political Literature  

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QUICK VIEWS ON LITERATURE AND SOCIAL CHANGE

[also see additional critical excerpts and related posts]

(1883) You may well think I am not here to criticize any special school of art or artists, or to plead for any special style, or to give you any instructions, however general, as to the practice of the arts. Rather I want to take counsel with you as to what hindrances may lie in the way towards making art what it should be, a help and solace to the daily life of all men…. Since I am a member of a Socialist propaganda I earnestly beg those of you who agree with me to help us actively, with your time and your talents if you can, but if not, at least with your money, as you can….

– William Morris, On Art and Socialism

 

(1903) [The novel] may be a great force, that works together with the pulpit and the universities for the good of the people, fearlessly proving that power is abused, that the strong grind the faces of the weak, that an evil tree is still growing in the midst of the garden, that undoing follows hard upon unrighteousness, that the course of Empire is not yet finished, and that the races of men have yet to work out their destiny in those great and terrible movements that crush and grind and rend asunder the pillars of the houses of the nations.

– Frank Norris, The Responsibilities of the Novelist

(1926) …all art is propaganda and ever must be, despite the wailing of the purists. I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whatever art I have for writing has been used always for propaganda for gaining the right of black folk to love and enjoy. I do not care a damn for any art that is not used for propaganda.

– W.E.B. DuBois, African American Literary Criticism, 1773-2000 (Hazel Arnett Ervin, Ed.)

(1932) As a group [revolutionary writers] are convinced that present-day industrial society is based upon exploitation and injustice; that it creates distress and misery for the many and brings happiness only to the few; that its dedication to the ideal of profit instead of use is destructive of everything fine and inspiring in life; and that until its private-property basis is destroyed and replaced by the social control of all property, the human race will never be able to escape the horrors of unemployment, poverty, and war. More than that, [these writers] believe that their literature can serve a greater purpose only when it contributes, first, toward the destruction of present-day society, and, second, toward the creation of a new society which will embody…a social, instead of an individualistic ideal. Unlike Ibsen, they do not ask questions and then refuse to answer them. Unlike the iconoclasts, they are not content to tear down the idols and stop there. Their aim is to answer questions as well as ask them, and to provide a new order to replace an old one. Their attitude, therefore, is a positive instead of a negative one.

– V.F. Calverton, The Liberation of American Literature

(1936) I think that literature must be viewed both as a branch of the fine arts and as an instrument of social influence. It is this duality, intrinsic to literature, that produces unresolved problems of literary criticism…. I suggest that in the field of literature the formula “All art is propaganda” be replaced by another: “Literature is an instrument of social influence”…. [Literature] can be propaganda—in the more limited sense of my definition of propaganda; and it can sometimes perform an objective social function that approaches agitation. However, it often performs neither of these functions and yet does perform an objective social function…

– James T. Farrell, “Literature and Propaganda,” in A Note on Literary Criticism
 

(1939) The aims of socialist critics were propagandistic, and it was inevitable that they should be paramount in a time when American critical systems were divided between art for art’s sake, art for morality’s sake, and various compromises between those two exhausted theories of esthetic purpose.… “Propaganda” is not used here as an invidious term. It is used to describe works consciously written to have an immediate and direct effect upon their readers’ opinions and actions, as distinguished from works that are not consciously written for that purpose or which are written to have a remote and indirect effect. It is possible that conventional critics have learned by now that to call a literary work “propaganda” is to say nothing about its quality as literature. By now enough critics have pointed out that some of the world’s classics were originally “propaganda” for something.

– Bernard Smith, Forces in Literary Criticism

 

(1941) Art cannot safely confine itself to merely using the values which arise out of a given social texture and integrating their conflicts, as the soundest, “purest” art will do. It must have a definite hortatory function, an educational element of suasion or inducement; it must be partially forensic. Such a quality we consider to be the essential work of propaganda.

– Kenneth Burke, “The Nature of Art Under Capitalism,” in The Philosophy of Literary Form

(1964) “In the last analysis, what we ask of the social novelist is not so much that he should reflect our view of society, but that he should make us see society his way” and that such novelists “look beyond [the national experience] to the universal human experience of which it is inevitably a part…. In admiring the novels of George Eliot, we need to remember that what seems to us the accuracy of her social observation is in some degree an indication of her greatness as a novelist, of her power to make us accept the image of society she presents.”

– Michael Millgate, American Social Fiction

(1978) The successful critic of society, it may be suggested, is the writer who learns the wisdom of indirection. He is the writer who learns to combine instruction with delight, without in any way compromising his integrity of blunting the force of his social criticism. Some literary forms are especially suited to methods of indirect attack: satire, for example. From the time of the Greeks onwards, satirists have invented a variety of ways to maintain apparent detachment and the indirect approach, while pressing home their attack. The three commonest forms are the beast fable, the imaginary journey, and the Utopian fantasy. The beast fable has been used by the Greek dramatist Aristophanes in the Frogs, by Chaucer in the Nun’s Priest’s Tale, and by George Orwell in Animal Farm. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels provides a model for the imaginary journey, while the history of literary utopias stretches – to take it no further – from More’s sixteenth-century Utopia, to Butler’s Erewhon (1872), Morris’s News From Nowhere (1891), and Huxley’s Brave New World (1932). It is essential for the satirist’s purpose to shock us into seeing our own familiar world through unfamiliar eyes; some radical change of perspective is therefore absolutely necessary. Each of the three devices, the beast fable, the imaginary journey, and Utopian fantasy achieves this end.

– John Colmer, “The Writer as Critic of Society,” Coleridge to Catch-22: Images of Society

(1990) I see protest as a genuine means of encouraging someone to feel the inconsistencies, the horror of the lives we are living. Social protest is saying that we do not have to live this way. If we feel deeply, and we encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply, we will find the germ of our answers to bring about change. Because once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy. And when they do not, we will ask, ‘Why don’t they?’ And it is the asking that will lead us inevitably to social change. So the question of social protest and art is inseparable for me. I can’t say it is an either-or proposition. Art for art’s sake doesn’t really exist for me. What I saw was wrong, and I had to speak up. I loved poetry and I loved words. But what was beautiful had to serve the purpose of changing my life, or I would have died. If I cannot air this pain and alter it, I will surely die of it. That’s the beginning of social protest.

– Audre Lorde, Black Women Writers at Work (Claudia Tate, Ed.)

 

(2003) I suggest that the role of the artist is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media…. It is the job of the artist to think outside the boundaries of permissible thought and dare to say things that no one else will say…. It is absolutely patriotic to point a finger at the government to say that it is not doing what it should be doing to safeguard the right of citizens to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness…. We must be able to look at ourselves, to look at our country honestly and clearly. And just as we can examine the awful things that people do elsewhere, we have to be willing to examine the awful things that are done here by our government.
– Howard Zinn, Artists in Times of War
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See also:

Cover for 'Fiction Gutted: The Establishment and the Novel'

by  Tony Christini

 

 

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Bibliography – 1800s to 2003
Critical Excerpts – 1883 to 2003
Quick Views
Social and Political Novel
Social and Political Literature

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A. O. Scott on Iraq War Films

A War on Every Screen:

And this may be the lesson that filmmakers need to absorb as they think about how to deal with the current war. It’s not a melodrama or a whodunit or even a lavish epic. It’s a franchise.

Frankly, he’s wrong. The war is a criminal melodrama, a criminal whodunit, a criminal lavish epic, and a criminal franchise. Continue reading A. O. Scott on Iraq War Films

Novels Make Nothing Happen?

So some say. Against all evidence – evidence of the reactionary, in this case:

Since it’s publication in 1957, Atlas Shrugged, the philosophical and artistic climax of Ayn Rand’s novels, has never been out of print. It continues to receive critical attention and is considered one of the most influential books ever published, impacting a variety of disciplines including philosophy, literature, economics, business and political science. Continue reading Novels Make Nothing Happen?

Let It Fly

A few thoughts on “Bluebird” – a short story by Karl Wenclas. The story is thoughtful and lively – repeatedly incisive, piercingly so at points, not least the Teen Pop Beat Magazine interview.

Unfortunately the story has a weak ending that is led up to by threads of weakness throughout. By the end of the story, the counterpoint character Alex Starski and her normative story are realized as little more than, not strikingly distinct from, that of the protagonist Melissa “Bluebird.” What is the music scene really like that Alex hopes to go back to? It’s never detailed, let alone clearly and powerfully counterpointed to Melissa Bluebird’s hollow narcissistic corporate scene. How can it be counterpointed when it’s not detailed? It’s not detailed directly and even very little by implication.

Continue reading Let It Fly

Poetry – Making Something Happen

Making Something Happen:
American Political Poetry between the World Wars

by Michael Thurston 

“Poetry makes nothing happen,” wrote W. H. Auden in 1939, expressing a belief that came to dominate American literary institutions in the late 1940s–the idea that good poetry cannot, and should not, be politically engaged. By contrast, Michael Thurston here looks back to the 1920s and 1930s to a generation of poets who wrote with the precise hope and the deep conviction that they would move their audiences to action. He offers an engaging new look at the political poetry of Edwin Rolfe, Langston Hughes, Ezra Pound, and Muriel Rukeyser.

Continue reading Poetry – Making Something Happen

Artist’s Job to Enlighten

by Eric Harrison: 

Ask actor Mark Ruffalo why so many current movies focus on revenge and he answers quickly and with passion. The films are reactions to the war in Iraq, he says.

“They’re allegories about destruction, vengeance, taking the law into your own hands,” he says. “They’re dealing with what’s happening in the world today.”

Then he really gets on a tear.

Continue reading Artist’s Job to Enlighten

The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

From the Irish Independent: 

Bao Ninh was born in Hanoi in 1952. During the Vietnam War he served with the Glorious 27th Youth Brigade. Of the 500 who went to war with the brigade in 1969, he is one of 10 who survived. The Sorrow of War is Bao Ninh’s first novel.

The Americans lost about 60,000 men in this war. The Vietnamese lost three million. With the publication of this novel, the Vietnamese finally found a voice.

This truly powerful book touches and moves the body, mind and soul. More memorable than Erich Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, it is a huge addition to our canon of world literature, a masterpiece that helps us understand war, its atrocities, its inevitability, its cowardice and its downright abuses and cruelties.

Continue reading The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

Neo-Damnedlican, Old Rethugnocrat

By now Hillary Clinton has made clear her intention to run for President of the United States as a Neo-Dumblican, a.k.a. an Old Repugnocrat. And why not? After all, Clinton served on the board of directors of Wal-mart, and currently receives the financial support of Wal-mart executives. She interned with Republican office holders, and as a lawyer advocated against the progressive low-income community organization ACORN in the interest of big money. Her health care proposals are very pleasing to the rapacious pharmaceutical industry. And she evidently intends to wage war on as much of the world as possible for the rest of her career. A Neo-Dumblican indeed, this Old Repugnocrat.

Continue reading Neo-Damnedlican, Old Rethugnocrat

John Updike and the Overtly Political

In a recent Q&A, John Updike says of a novel by Ngugi wa Thiong’o:

“I find it a hard book to believe, it’s overtly political, which pains me. I was told by my daughter in-law, who is a Kenyan, that Ngugi liked it – he’s trying to fictionalize the dire conditions of African politics and African leadership, which I thought was terribly broad. You also have to consider there’s a virtue to a book that you are blind to or numb to get though…”

Willfully “blind”?

Purposefully “numb”?

This comment by Updike helps reveal the bankrupt nature of about half of his “rules” for reviewing, the negligent nature of the framing emphasis of his “rules”.

Continue reading John Updike and the Overtly Political

John Updike’s Lit Establishment Rules

When reviewing a book:

Don’t rock the boat. Moreover, don’t even think it can be rocked. Don’t acknowledge there is a boat, nor that you are on it and sailing in any critical direction. Bow to an author’s wishes. Deny out of hand the ignorant, callous, and delusional nature of John Updike’s primary rules for reviewing. Do this well, and you too may be a successful lit establishment reviewer. See the “rules” here: Reviewing 101: John Updike’s rules.

Unfortunately, the well-intentioned President of the National Book Critics Circle, John Freeman describes Updike’s 31 year old “rules” for reviewing as “worth following” and “still the single best guide to fairness today.” Continue reading John Updike’s Lit Establishment Rules

The Big Red Songbook

by Anne Feeney

The 2007 publication of The Big Red Songbook is long overdue.  Folklorist Archie Green has been in possession of 29 editions of the legendary Little Red Songbook of the IWW since Wobbly folklorist John Neuhaus entrusted them to him in 1958.  Published between 1909 and 1956, the IWW songbooks in the Neuhaus collection vividly embody the humor, philosophy and history of the working class.  Millions of copies of these little songbooks have been sold, giving the IWW its well-deserved reputation as a “singing union.”  For those of you saying “IWWWhat?” — here’s a little history….

Dropkick Murphys

Friends to the Working Class 

by Paul Piwko and Sarah Bromley

The Murphys started in Boston in the mid-90s as a band of young men from working class and union households. Says vocalist and bassist Ken Casey, a founding member: “We were singing about real life stuff at a time when [the] standard 18 year-old punk rock message [was] ‘Fauthority’ and ‘F- the police’.” The Murphys’ “real life” lyrics hit home with fans from backgrounds similar to their own. “People from that walk of life started to gravitate towards the band, and in the early days—back in the mid-’90s—places like Detroit, where labor issues are real life and death stuff, were our biggest footholds.”
 
Continue reading Dropkick Murphys

Jeff VanderMeer lamenting the state of fantasy short fiction

VanderMeer:

…the more I’ve thought about it, the more I feel that my general apathy when reading a lot of fantasy short fiction today comes from finding in it a profoundly disturbing, if sturdy, middle class professionalism. The magazines and anthologies are dominated by what I’d call centrist fiction that simply drowns in competence. It’s good – it’s just not great. It’s clever – it’s just not trying to do more, or it does reach for more, but in familiar ways…. Words for what I was reading were more like twee, comfortable, recycled, reasonable, well-rounded, whimsical, unoriginal, well-behaved, and fuzzy.

With all due respect to Jeff VanderMeer, who I assume is a talented writer, the problem with VanderMeer’s thoughts on the matter is that his post is as weak as the fiction he decries: It’s essentially “twee, comfortable, recycled, reasonable, well-rounded, whimsical, unoriginal, well-behaved, and fuzzy” – quite far from what he would like to see, fiction that is “rough and wild and pushing and punk and visionary” – let alone even more culturally vital fictive art.

Continue reading Jeff VanderMeer lamenting the state of fantasy short fiction