Literary Criticism and the Ocean
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Wed, 20 Oct 1999 13:28:49 -0700
While walking along the Pacific (not being a Keats, I can't call up a stout
Cortez), for some reason I thought of the ingenuity of literary criticism
borrowing from the latest-breaking to the most passe of disciplines, all to
undertake the analysis of Literature. I imagined thousands of literary
critics, assembled beneath klieg lights, standing over the nearly dead body
of Literature, sharpening their trusty computer-aided scalpels, preparing
to dig in.
After noticing the bullet-approach of a blurred dog and lacking a Joycean
ashplant, I stopped to admire a sand castle at my feet--its deep moats, its
impregnable walls and incontestable towers reaching to the sky. And then
glanced to my right at the ocean. And thought: from Anon. to Zukofsky to
the future Anon., from I-don't-know-which-B.C.-millennium-to-write-down
until an unknowable date (when we--homo sapiens--finally exit off this stage
we found ourselves standing on, anchored by the grace of gravity), the ocean
of Literature soon will be back with its high tide.