WRITERS' CHOICE
EDITORS' NOTE: Writers' Choice
is a new department ofshort comments
on oldas well as new books that our contributors like particularly andwant to
call attention to.
LEONARD KRIEGEL : Nothing
can be more dreary or more stul–
tifying to the creative spirit than
much of what generally passes for
Marxist literary criticism. A brilliant
exception is the late Ernst Fischer's
Kunst und Koexistenz,
which was
published in 1969 in this country as
Art Against Ideology
(trans. Anna
Bostock, Braziller) . As literary crit–
icism, it is incisive and stimulating;
as an example of Marxist human–
ism, it is both moving and hopeful.
I cannot understand the neglect the
book has received in this country,
especially when I compare it to
something like Christopher Caud–
well's
Romance andRealism,
which
in our own time has somehow
achieved the reputation of a classic
Marxist critical statement. Fischer's
first chapter, in which he compares
Beckett's
Endgame
to
Solzhenit–
syn's
Ivan Denisovich,
is a master–
ful analysis of two works which deal
with "the negation of . . . [man's]
dignity. " And
Art Against Ideol–
ogy
succeeds, among other things,
in defining just how and why lit–
erature is important in an age when
thought, like life, magnifies chaos.
George Orwell's
Essays
(Harvest)
have certainly not been neglected .
But each time I reread them, I find
myself envious ofOrwell's ability to
define issues and focus on the real
question at hand. Compare his es–
say on Ghandi to Ericson's book–
length study. For Ericson, Ghandi
is a saint; for Orwell, he is first and
foremost a rather unattractive man
who functioned with verve and in–
telligence against English imperi–
alism . Orwell inevitably tends to
see men as relatively small, a rather
healthy antidote
to
contemporary
hagiography . And I can think of
few English essayists whom we our–
selves might benefit more from
studying . The man actually writes
sentences-lucid, cogent, simple.
ROSALIND KRAUSS : Seeing the
film
India Song
by Marguerite
Duras has led me into the network
of the novels, plays, and scenarios
she has written over the last decade,
particularly
The Ravishing of Lol
Stein, The Vice-Consel,
La
Femme
du Gange,
and the dramatic text for
India Song
itself. The obsessional
reworking of a small inventory of
narrative fragments produces in
each successive text the effect of a
voice remembering . This quality of
