The Innocent Eye: On Modern Literature and the Arts

by Roger Shattuck

In this volume, one of the great polymaths of our time focuses on the often disputed contributions of modern, primarily French, art and literature to contemporary culture. Emphasizing individual works and artists over theory and method, and with an authoritativeness characteristic of all his writing, Roger Shattuck embraces a wide range of themes, including politics, theatricality, the dynamics of artistic movements and the nature of consciousness. The essays here range from his celebrated analyses of Dada and the 1935 International Writers' Congress, to fresh considerations of nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, to groundbreaking studies of Monet, Magritte and the art writings of Meyer Shapiro. A tour-de-force of aesthetic philosophy and criticism, "The Innocent Eye" is, says "The New York Times," "a fast-paced, interesting book spun out of a wealth of intimately assimilated culture."

Genres: Nonfiction, Literary Criticism

368 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

Reviews

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Shattuck, who died in 2005, would have probably called himself a flaneur - a title that he translates at different times as either idler or walker. In more American terms, I see him in the James Bros/Henry Adams/Kenneth Burke tradition of pragmatic journeyman scholars whose minds pulse and writhe like surfacing kraken. No one who has read "The Banquet Years," for example, will be able to ignore how dexterously Shattuck's virtuosity shuttles between the visual arts, music, literature and biography. Man seems to be everywhere. TBY - one of the most readable, entertaining and panoptic books I've ever read - is an obvious choice for his magnum opus; but for some reason, his first book of collected essays is the one I keep coming back to. It's a travel book into the strange realm of 20th century French art: a country populated by some of the most fascinating creatures you or I will ever have the privilege of gawking at. See that skinny guy with the fanny pack taking notes by the jeep? That's Roger Shattuck. For now you make fun of how his sunscreen never seems fully rubbed in. But years later you will read his report and be amazed that someone so unpretentious could have seen and heard so much.

The Innocent Eye reminds us that an undiscovered country is one we visit everyday: we don't see it because it's inconvenient for us to see, and besides, even if we wanted to we need that initial move to break us out of our habits and into the current of discovery and reaction. By sticking the articulate hand of his intelligence up the backs of everyone from Baudelaire to Jarry to Duchamp, Shattuck provides a demonstration of flaneurie that Emerson himself might have written. Embrace your acting. Aspire to conviction. Be, as another James once advised, the man on which nothing is lost. In doing this, admit how much your role is created, by yourself and others, rather than simply natural (whatever that means). The past has a lot to do with it, but you are a unique moment and will not be repeated. So why not grab the levers and do something with your self?

One big thing I see Puritans like you and me needing to overcome in this idea is of course the real world. It's still there, right? And I'm not the misfit outsider that I always expect myself of being, but a Native, that one thing that no one will ever be ever? One of the things I like most about Shattuck is the way that he brings these anxieties with him - subtly, and with the greatest of erudition of course, but they're there. In this way, he is ultimately a dilettante, unconverted by the huge amounts of mental and real time that he's spent in his adopted country of conviction. He wants to "save literature." He wonders if "acting might have made lunatics out of us all." He's earnest, in other words, which I guess all of the amazing little French gods described in this book were too - but unlike them he's not so sure, and I love that because it makes him mine much more than his intelligence, his wit, his ability to write sentences. D.H. Lawrence knew it best when he wrote Studies in American Literature: our strongest asset as a country/state of mind/whatever is that we are never really sure of ourselves. As such our vacillation may be a more accurate or at least convincing mimesis.

[Lori · Rating 5 out of 5]

These essays are a way back to the Innocent Eye, required reading for painters and poets and their audience. The rest of his books are an object lesson in continuing education.