Candor and Perversion: Literature, Education, and the Arts

by Roger Shattuck

With Candor and Perversion , Roger Shattuck has written the most complete assessment of the poxes that threaten our Western literary heritage. With incisive analysis, he elucidates the nature of intellectual craftsmanship, defends art's undeniable moral component, and, faced with an academic world shattered by theory, laments how extra-literary politics have grown increasingly dominant, now attempting to eliminate the very category of literature. Whether commenting on Foucault, Pulp Fiction , Georgia O'Keeffe, V.S. Naipaul, or the survival of a core tradition in the humanities, Shattuck presents a stirring synthesis of the principles and values by which we can live together as a nation finally at peace with its diversity. A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and a TLS Notable Book of 1999.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Essays, Education, Nonfiction

432 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

Reviews

[Gary · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shattuck is very much what one might want to call a conservative when it comes to education, particularly English Literature, and I don't think he'd have objected to being labeled so. He makes a pretty good argument for books that should be considered canon and why. When he's right, he tends to be very right.

When he argues against a book or the meanings of anything published after, say, 1950 he tends to lose the thread. His commentary on more contemporary culture betrays an almost goofy lack of comprehension. So goofy, in fact, that it calls into question the lucidity of some of his earlier, more legit arguments. When he's wrong, he tends to be embarrassingly wrong.

[Adam Marischuk · Rating 4 out of 5]

As I read through this book I came across a few bookmarks, like monuments to where previous readers gave up. The first bookmark was placed on page 149, a third the way through a chapter on the painter Manet and only fifteen pages into the second part of the book. It was placed there by me ten years ago.

The reason I placed it there then was that the first part of the book, Intellectual Craftsmanship was excellent and I believe I've read it thrice. Shattuck is at his best as a curmudgeonly cantakerous critic of modern education, culture and society. He is a conservative at heart, despite claiming to be "liberal in political matters and conservationist in cultural matters." (p. 24) He rightfully belongs with, and may even surpass, the likes of other commentators, from Chesterton, through Wendell Berry to Roger Scruton.

The first chapter, which is summarized on the dust-jacket is the (in)famous Nineteen These on Literature, and the battle-cry of the Association of Literary Scholars and Critics (ALSC), set up in opposition to the trends of the MLA.

The next few chapters (2.Perplexing Lessons: Is There a Core Tradition in the Humanities? 3. American Education Against Itself and 4. Education: Higher and Lower) should form the backbone of any critical appraisal of modern public education, at both the highschool and university levels.

In the fifth chapter, How to Read a Book Shattuck takes issue with Mortimer Adler's How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading. I don't necessarily believe the criticism of Adler is warranted but an important theme in understanding Shattuck becomes evident, that literature, much like the plastic arts, should be approached as an art, that is, blindly. This theme reemerges throughout the book, particularly in chapter 10 Art at First Sight and the second part.

But as I finised the first part and moved into the second part, it became apparent why I had abandoned the book there ten years ago. The second part is dry. Essentially, the second part of the book (divided into two parts, roughly France (chapters 15-28) and America (chapters 29-39)) is a series of book reviews, Art exhibition reviews with a few odd, in every sense of the word, plays. If you are the type of person who likes to read book reviews about books you will not, even can not, read on subjects peripheral to anyone but a specialists' interests, or art exhibitions long past, then this is the part of the book for you.

Here Shattuck is at his most obsure. His interest in, and praise of, the art scene in the late Belle Époque continuing through the inter-war period is slow and dense. Impressionism, Cubism, Futurism, Dadaism all feature prominently, and if you are like me, require a quick look at wikipedia to fill in the gaps. Chapters on Mallarmé, Marcel Duchamp (of notoriety for The Fountain), Man Ray, O'Keeffe and Stieglitz are reviews on biographies of lives I have little to no interest in studying in depth.

Shattuck is no sycophant, but he loses his critical edge here. His interpretations and brief biographies breeze over the serious problems with modern art and artists, explained so eloquently by Scruton in Faking It in Confessions of a Heretic.

The second bookmark I crossed at page 197, roughly half-way through the book right between the last two pages of a chapter on Futurism. An odd place to give up by the previous reader. The second bookmark was a folded newspaper review of Candor and Perversion by John Sutherland. After a little digging, I believe the review comes from the Times Literary Supplement in 2000, which would explain why the price of the book is quoted in pounds in the review. Sutherland concludes his review with

Candor and Perversion would be a stronger book if all its thirty-nine chapters were as strict as that on "nineteen theses", or as entertainingly slanderous as that on Foucault. Unfortunately, most of the book is made up of reprinted reviews, some of them fifteen years old. Shattuck's range is impressive, covering Sarraute, Coleridge, Kipling, Proust, Flaubert, Picasso, Cocteau, O'Keeffe, Man Ray, Paz, Naipaul and Renata Adler. But these pieves have done thier job of work and should have been left undisturbed to yellow in the archives.

Fair enough, but don't let that detract from the genuinely interesting and valuable first part of the book.

[Earl Pestano · Rating 3 out of 5]

An in-depth study on the role of literature.

[James Henderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Harold Bloom judged that both as a reader and a moralist Roger Shattuck surpassed Camus. Striking as that may seem, this collection of literary and critical essays provides evidence of the truth of Bloom's judgement. Shattuck continually demonstrates his erudition through the breadth of his reading and the depth of his criticism. Literature, art, music -- the world of ideas -- is spanned in prose that charms with a touch of Proustian perfection.

[Bryan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chapters 1 & 2 comprise one of the best educational manifestos I've read: http://www.nytimes.com/books/first/s/...