Literature Against Itself: Literary Ideas in Modern Society

by Gerald Graff

Since its first publication more than fifteen years ago, Literature Against Itself has achieved wide recognition as the first major critique of post-1960s cultural radicalism―and still, one of the best. In it, Gerald Graff argues that the reigning strategies for defending literature now end up by trivializing it, and he analyzes why and how they have gone wrong. He charges that our leading literary critics, whether they claim to be traditionalists or innovators, have taken positions that ultimately undermine the authority of art, literature, and criticism itself. "An extraordinarily important book, biting and cogent on every page."―Robert Boyers, Salmagundi . "In this recoil from the current anarchy of interpretation, Graff has affirmed that `literary thinking is inseparable from social and moral thinking."'― New York Times Book Review . "A wonderfully trenchant and illuminating inquiry… the shrewdness and cogency of his commentary are constantly arresting."― Virginia Quarterly Review .

Genres: Literature, Academia, Literary Criticism

276 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1979

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a work of metacriticism, in which Graff comments on contradictions and fallacies in the respective works of a range of literary critics and theorists, including writers like Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Herbert Marcuse, and Jacques Derrida.

Although Graff's book is academic in focus, and comments on postmodern critical thought, I find it very accessible in its language and argument. IMO, I do not think you have to have read all the books Graff has in order to enjoy this work. I would add, though, that although Graff comments on themes and ideas that appear to be common to the critics he discusses, I do not think that reading this book should be seen as a substitute for reading those critics' works. At one point, Graff quotes Leslie A. Fiedler who writes "the newest criticism must be aesthetic, poetic in form as well as substance": I think this is reflected particularly in the work of critics like Sontag, Barthes and Ihab Hassan, each of whom I enjoy reading not only for their ideas, but for the creative ways in which they express those ideas.

At the end of the book there is some detailed discussion of work by Norman Mailer and Donald Barthelme, but most of Graff’s commentary is on critics' ideas about literature, rather than on the literature itself.

For Graff, literature has a social function, and in the context of the growing autonomy—or is it isolation?—of the writer in contemporary culture, he has a negative view of much postwar American fiction. Among other things, Graff comments on the “mimetic fallacy,” suggesting that the “distortions” in recent fiction may contribute to analogous distortions in social reality rather than merely representing them to the end of criticizing them.

Acquired Feb 22, 2005
Powell's City of Books, OR

[Greg_en · Rating 4 out of 5]

Essential

[Ivan Labayne]

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