Just wanted to point to Jonathan Mayhew's early response to Andrew Epstein's
Beautiful Enemies<http://www.amazon.com/Beautiful-Enemies-Friendship-Postwar-American/dp/019518100X/ref=sr_1_1/002-2927097-7436064?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1181778196&sr=8-1>[Amazon
US linbk] at Bemsha
Swing <http://jonathanmayhew.blogspot.com/>:
I have been reading Andrew Epstein's *Beautiful Enemies* on friendship in
postwar American poetry. It's really very perceptive on O'Hara. I haven't
read much of the book yet but I've already found a few quotes I'm going to
appropriate (I mean quote with proper attribution) in the book I am writing.
It always helps to have some really well-written quotes that make your point
for you. Not your main point, but one that you need to make along the way.
In this case, a very good summary of O"Hara plurality of selves. It's one of
those books with quotable ideas on every page.
I noticed Kevin Killian has a mightily perceptive review at Amazon.com of
this book, up already. Kevin has single-handedly converted Amazon into a
serious venue for criticism.
Like Kevin, I am less interested in the American pragmatist and Emersonian
angles. Perhaps not being an Americanist I don't care as much about tracing
everything back to Emerson and Wiliam James. Isn't that the déformation
professionelle of the Americanists? Not that it isn't a valid critical path
to explore. There is a lot of Emerson in Ashbery, and a lot of Emersonian
self-fashioning in O'Hara.
It also looks like it's going to be perceptive on Baraka/Jones.
Emerson is not really a Pragmatist, but a Trancendentalist. There is a
difference. I haven't had a chance to look at Epstein's book, but it looks
like the sort of thing folks here would be interested in. And the Kevin
Killian review at Amazon is well worth reading, which is why I linked to it.
jd
--
Joseph Duemer
Professor of Humanities
Clarkson University
[sharpsand.net]
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