The Death of Literature

by ALVIN B. KERNAN

Literature has passed through a crisis of confidence in recent decades—a radical questioning of its traditional values and its importance to humanity. In this witty and eloquent book, a distinguished professor of humanities looks at some of the agents that have contributed to literature's demise and ponders whether its vitality can be restored in the changing circumstances of late twentieth-century culture.  Other critics, such as E. D. Hirsch and Allan Bloom, have also explored the growing cultural illiteracy of modern society. Alvin Kernan probes deeper, relating the death of literature to potent forces in our postindustrial world—most obviously, the technological revolution that is rapidly transforming a print to an electronic culture, replacing the authority of the written word with the authority of television, film, and computer screens. The turn taken by literary criticism itself, in deconstructing traditional literature and declaring it void of meaning in itself, and in focusing on what are described as its ideological biases against women and nonwhites, has speeded the disintegration. Recent legal debates about copyright, plagiarism, and political patronage of the arts have exposed the greed and self-interest at work under the old romantic images of the imaginative creative artist and the work of art as a perfect, unchanging icon. Kernan describes a number of the crossroads where literature and society have met and literature has failed to stand up. He discusses the high comedy of the obscenity trial in England against Lady Chatterley's Lover, in which the British literary establishment vainly tried to define literature. He takes alarmed looks at such agents of literary disintegration as schools where children who watch television eight hours a day can't read, decisions about who chooses and defines the words included in dictionaries, faculty fights about the establishment of new departments and categories of study, and courtrooms where criminals try to profit from bestselling books about their crimes. According to Kernan, traditional literature is ceasing to be legitimate or useful in these changed social surroundings. What is needed, he says, if it is any longer possible in electronic culture, is a conception of literature that fits in some positive way with the new ethos of post-industrialism, plausibly claiming a place of importance both to individual lives and to society as a whole for the best kind of writing.

Genres: Literary Criticism

239 pages, Paperback

First published September 26, 1990

Reviews

[S. Wilson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Alvin Kernan's death decree of "Literature" is more of a condemnation of deconstructionist literary theories and the inability of Universities to strictly adhere to traditional classic literature, which includes the legitimization of less conservative schools of literary theory. To be more specific on that latter point, Kernan repeatedly mentions how Feminist, Minority, and Marxist Literary Theory have been granted legitimacy over "the real language of men." Economics are also injected into the discussion, as Kernan occasionally points out how much capitalism and the free-market helped define or control "real" literature.

In short, Kernan's theory on literature seems to be driven by politically and socially conservative ideologies more than anything else. This is readily apparent in the first chapter when he highlights the death of real literature by discussing out three art exhibits of the eighties, two of which - the Mapplethorpe exhibit and the "Piss-Christ" - were mainly controversial due to right-wing outrage over the subject matter. Beyond the bizarre notion of comparing NEA funding to literary Academia, this start complains of the politicization of art while simultaneously taking a political stand along strictly conservative lines. This is how the majority of his argument continues to play out, and underlines the major flaw of this work: Kernan claims the degradation of the intellectual life of literature while buttressing his argument with repeated morale and political judgments. It should be no surprise that Kenan specifically mentions The Closing of the American Mind by Alan Bloom in his introduction, as The Death of Literature follows the same conservative argument that progressively liberal ideologies and an increasingly permissive culture are bringing about the destruction of goodness, decency, and normalcy.

This is not to say that The Death of Literature isn't worth reading. Kernan knows his literature, and both his historical and structural interpretations are worth reading for his deeply informed opinions, even when he betrays his accumulated knowledge to defend his conservative viewpoints. An entire chapter, for example, is dedicated to how the literary world's defense of Lady Chatterley against obscenity charges began the decline of literature, somehow equating sexual promiscuity and anti-censorship with a loosening of academic principles. Indeed, any advances in literary theory beyond 1900 are seen as a step backwards (or down, as the case may be), with the aforementioned feminist, Marxist, deconstructionist, and other minority (black, gay, etc...) focuses on literary theory being mentioned repeatedly throughout. Of course, literary critics are also to blame for becoming a profession, and you can hear the same venom in his voice when he mentions them as you would a Republican bemoaning "activist judges."

A perfect example of the intellectual dishonesty inherent within some of Kernan's arguments is when he goes off against deconstructionist theory by repeatedly referring to the Jacques Derrida quote "there is nothing outside the text," and rallying against the idea that nothing exists but the words. The problem is that this is an oft-mistranslated quote that really translates as "there is no outside-text," which was meant to describe how words cannot avoid linguistic context, and that words gain their meanings from their context and contrast with other words. I personally believe that Kernan knows this, but chooses to believe the intentionally misunderstood language to support his soapbox.

So, if you tend to be right-leaning in your social-political views, then this book will definitely preach to your choir as it laments the loss of the good old days when the definition of what counts as literature was controlled by a small cabal of elitist white males ensconced in old-world Academia. However, if your views shift more to the left, you'll also get a lot out of Kernan's evaluation of literature's gradual progression, as long as you're able to read between the lines, and willing to forgive his occasional lapses into ideological furors over nothing.

[Sargun Saddhar · Rating 1 out of 5]

god forbid women and minorities become a part of the literary canon.

this one's a no for me.

[Mz · Rating 4 out of 5]

https://www.hartismag.gr/hartis-70/di...

[foundfoundfound · Rating 4 out of 5]

not a prophecy; a post-mortem.

[Lauren Shaak]

Deeply interesting