Ronald Sukenick
THIRTEEN DIGRESSIONS
When LeRoi Jones [BarakaJ introduced his 1963 anthology of
contemporary fiction ,
The Moderns ,
by claiming descent from the Modern
tradition for "the best of American twentieth century writing," it seemed
to me an unquestionable premise . But now it seems clear there has been a
break in that descent, and that to make it explicit and disentangle ourselves
from some of the tendencies of Modernism, and especially from its attend–
ant criticism, will clear the air. There have been unforeseen, though maybe
predictable, developments. The hermeticism of the Moderns engendered ,
not without their implicit and, at times,'explicit encouragement, a new and
reductive academicism. The New Criticism, with its ideas about hypostasis,
intentional fallacy, ambiguity, and withheld emotion, emphasized the
hermetic side of the Moderns and attenuated the poem's connection with
experience. One must sustain tension rather than achieve catharsis . Irony,
highly valued as a means of control, becomes a form of suppression that
chokes off libido . The hermeneutics of the New Criticism was, in part, a
prophylaxis designed to protect life from the disruptive energy of art. If art
is potential disease (disorder, plotlessness, idiosyncratic form , irregular versi–
fication), it follows that interpretation must be quarantine .
It
was in reaction
to this kind of devitalization that Sontag demanded an erotics of art .
*
*
*
There was another and opposite side to the American Moderns that
may turn out to be the most important and most native aspect of their work,
though it was not picked up by the critics descending from Eliot (who now
begins to seem an isolated, exceptional figure among the rest) since it con–
tradicts their image of literature which tended toward that of a closed box .
I am referring to the continuity of
art
and experience which is so obvious in
The
Cantos;
and in the work ofWilliams, especially
Paterson .
It
is evident in the
readiness of these poets to use their own unmediated experience without the
