----- Original Message -----
From: "Dominic Fox" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, April 08, 2009 12:44 PM
Subject: Re: Dead ends
> Content/style doesn't work as an opposition - in particular, content isn't
> what you have left over after you've peeled off the style. Content is the
> concrescence of style, or that about which style coalesces. It isn't
> anything apart from this coalescence, although you could say the same of a
> tornado. The style of a washing machine manual co-ordinates indication and
> expectation in such a way that the gentle reader learns how to operate a
> washing machine. Its referentiality is the outcome of successful
> co-ordination. Bad manuals, like the one for my old VCR, indicate buttons
> that aren't there and generate expectations that aren't met. Perhaps it
> refers to a different model.
>
I know what you're saying is the conventional wisdom and it sounds very
sophisticated but finally I think it's nonsense. Let's say there are two
poems, and criticizing them you say that despite their different styles,
personae, etc., they're "essentially" about the same thing. Or even that
they both belong to the "school of quietude," or exemplify a given ideology.
You've made a distinction between style and content. Of course that
distinction is ambiguous - "progressive" content may have a "reactionary"
style and vice versa, a strong or witty style may excuse trivial
subject-matter, etc. But to say there is no distinction, that style can't
be to some degree "peeled off" a layer independent of it, is to say there
can be no criticism or periodization; that literature is an endless series
of unique, incommensurate experiences. Which it plainly isn't.
Two more points. 1) Someone who insists on a style/content distinction and
the prioritization of content is not necessarily a Stalinist, a conservative
moralist, or any other sort of ideologue. 2) It seems to me that your
"instruction manual" analogy argues for my position, not yours. The "right
way of operating the machine" exists independently of the style of the set
of manuals; a good style corresponds to that right way. It's not an analogy
I would have used - because ideally each new apercu that leads to a poem,
each new content, is simply that: new (unlike a brand of washing machines or
even the idea of washing machines).
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