Paper Trail: Selected Prose, 1965-2003

by Richard Howard

Adroit, inventive essays culled from a lifetime of literature
For decades Richard Howard's stylish, deeply informed criticism has enlightened and entertained his devoted audiences. Here is a comprehensive selection of his finest essays on a splendid range of subjects--from American poets like Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore to French artists such as Rodin and Michel Delacroix, from modern sculpture to the photography of the human body. And Howard brings to his consideration of French literature a rare wisdom drawn from his celebrated work as a translator of Stendhal and Gide, Barthes and Cocteau, Yourcenar and Gracq.
Richard Howard is a poet, scholar, teacher, critic, and translator. The author of more than a dozen books, including "Inner Voices: Selected Poems, 1963-2003," he is the recipient of both the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the National Book Award for translation. He teaches at Columbia University and is poetry editor of "The Paris Review." Finalist for the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism Richard Howard has been writing stylish, deeply informed commentary on modern culture and literature for more than four decades. His earlier work "Alone with ""America"": Essays on the Art of Poetry in the ""United States"" Since 1950" has long been hailed as a landmark in literary criticism. "Paper Trail" is a selection of his finest essays, including some never before published in book form, on a splendid range of subjects--from American poets such as Emily Dickinson and Marianne Moore to French artists such as Rodin and Michel Delacroix. Also included are considerations of modern sculpture and of the photography of the human body.
Howard's intense familiarity with modern poetry is seen to excellent effect in essays on "the poetry of forgetting," on the cause and effects of experimental poetry, and on the first books of poets whose work he helped introduced. Of course, Howard brings to his consideration of French literature a rare wisdom drawn from his celebrated work as a translator of Stendhal and Gide, Barthes and Cocteau, Yourcenar and Gracq. "If Richard Howard were not a poet at all, he would stand out nevertheless as a translator, an editor, a teacher of poets, and a critic of French, English, and American literature. "Paper Trail" collects his arrestingly elaborate essays on all three, as well as Howard's writings on visual art . . . The essays in "Paper Trail" offer language at least as intricate as that of Howard's verse, and information in even greater abundance: They can teach what the poems assume we know. Howard's preference for mannered abstractions, which can hinder the poems, assists the essays, making them more ambitious, and more daring, than most; even when their particular judgments do not convince, their general propositions enlighten."--Stephen Burt, "The ""Washington"" Post Book World" "If Richard Howard were not a poet at all, he would stand out nevertheless as a translator, an editor, a teacher of poets, and a critic of French, English, and American literature. "Paper Trail" collects his arrestingly elaborate essays on all three, as well as Howard's writings on visual art . . . The essays in "Paper Trail" offer language at least as intricate as that of Howard's verse, and information in even greater abundance: They can teach what the poems assume we know. Howard's preference for mannered abstractions, which can hinder the poems, assists the essays, making them more ambitious, and more daring, than most; even when their particular judgments do not convince, their general propositions enlighten."--Stephen Burt, "The ""Washington"" Post Book World" "Howard, with a text, is like the boyfriend everyone wants: he sees you for who you really are, and still loves you. His sympathy, like his culture, is immense. At the same time, because of his Stradivarian attunement to language (no surprise in a distinguished poet and translator), he sees what is actually there, the words, and from them along extracts the meaning. His own use of language is an added gift: high, mandarin, but with pauses and dashes and side-thoughts--the movements of a happy mind."--Joan Acocella, author of "Willa Cather and the Politics of Criticism" "While the essays range from Emily Dickinson to Robert Mapplethorpe to Claude Simon, they constitute an intimate autobiography . . . "Paper Trail" is something much larger than an argument about the shape of American poetry."--James Longenbach, "Boston"" Review" "Well-crafted essays, forewords, and afterwords on poets and poetry by the critic, translator, editor, and poet . . . The collection opens with a sparkling essay, from 1973, on Emily Dickinson, who was just then being rediscovered and needed her champions in a rhymeless time. Howard's consideration is highly illuminating, and it well illustrates his magpie technique of turning up glittering oddments . . . Elsewhere the noted translator of Baudelaire and other French writers turns hi...

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction

448 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Buck · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m really sorry to inflict this on you, but in order to make sense of my review you’ll need to choke down as much of the following sentence as you can stomach:

I have woven a tendentious chaplet from the unweeded garden of accolades which sprouted around Marianne Moore at the very inception of her poetic career and which has tended to hypertrophy and overgrow the embowered personage it was intended to honor and embellish; let me lead you up that garden path only a moment longer, and perhaps out of the precincts of encomium—always a little stifling, a little blinding—by noting that there is, simply, no comparable instance of such unanimity of favor among our canonical Modernists and their substantiating critics…

Okay. Deep breaths. Stretch it out. Grab a Fresca. Now a few points:

1) Appearances to the contrary, this sentence was NOT written by Henry James circa 1890, but by the poet/critic Richard Howard circa 1990.
2) It’s a fairly typical specimen of Howard’s prose. May God have mercy on his soul.
3) I’ve only quoted half of it. Half.

Since Howard is so fond of the heavy-duty, extenda-cab metaphor, let me try one of my own: this is a sentence that advertises itself as an event, toting around a rhetorical sandwich board to hype some shady intellectual rub ’n’ tug. But once you go in past the tinted windows and the bead curtain, what do you find? A sullen, middle-aged Russian woman glaring at you through the smoke of her Matinée slim (nope, no idea where all THAT came from). If you have the stamina to hack away the surrounding foliage of the prose, the basic, paraphrasable message you finally arrive at is almost insultingly homely: i.e. Marianne Moore has often been the victim of her own critical success (would that have been so hard, Richard?)

Stylistically the sentence is a disaster, IMO (and if you want to get into all the geeky technical specifics of what went wrong, we can talk about that. In private.) Now I have to tread carefully here, because I routinely commit many of the same outrages against language and decency that Howard does, plus a few others he’s never even thought of. But my question is: why? Why does Howard feel the need to channel the gabby spirit of Henry James, and not just here, but on page after page? I have my problems with James—who doesn’t?—but I’m just bright enough to see that his stuttering, affected style was a highly-developed tool for transcribing reality—as James experienced it. Fine. What I don’t understand is how a tool that (sometimes) worked so beautifully for a dandified 19th century New Englander waddling around Europe could be just as effective in the hands of a 21st century New Yorker doing…whatever it is Howard does. The world has changed; the English language has changed, and Howard—I hate to break it to him—is not Henry James.

I realize I’m spazzing out over one silly sentence. But if I seem to be taking this issue a little too personally, it’s because I’ve always been tempted by the very sin I accuse Howard of. Part of me loves this stuff; part of me wants to get all solemn and mandarin and deliver orotund pronouncements from some high-culture cathedral. But that church is empty, man. There’s nothing left to do but sweep up.

So what am I saying? Am I saying—and I’m talking to myself now, you understand—that I should throw down my Penguin John Donne, stop being such a drip and go play beach blanket bingo with the rest of the gang? Uh, no. Not exactly. But while I may not always like my world, my culture or myself, I’m committed to living in, and with, all three. And the ponderous evasions of my inner Howard are NOT helping.

Is it just me? Are the rest of you able to integrate Henry James and the Jonas Brothers, God and toe lint, into one coherent, kick-ass Weltanschauung? I see. In that case, I salute you. But I’m not quite there yet.

Just to give this outburst a review-like sheen, I should mention that Howard’s not a bad critic. He’s very…authoritative. It’s just that his tone—his pompous, curatorial tone—drives me up the freaking wall. He writes as if literature were an old family vault, with him as the self-appointed caretaker. I love literature too, and I think it’s pretty important, but that’s precisely why I refuse to get so ceremonious about it. Put it this way: if you love a woman, you can’t go around treating her like a goddess all the time, or else you’ll never do anything so vulgar as to sleep with her. I’m no great expert on literature (or women), but I think I’m right about this.

[Alan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pretentious, overwritten and obviously someone who likes to hear himself talk in the writing sense. You need a big dictionary and a scorecard.