Chunks of Existence

The Modern Tradition, edited by Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson, Jr. Oxford, $13.75 Thirty years ago English professors wrote books in which they called attention to themselves “closely reading” (or talking about closely reading) “the works themselves.” This was called “the new criticism”: a system of dissection charts and procedures which they were working out to circumvent Pound and Eliot, who had accomplished a revolution by suggesting that the professor remove himself, his slogans, and his antics, and let the students read the authors.

Today the situation is different and the threat comes from another quarter. The most significant-popular writers of the postwar period have been Camus and Sartre. Both have argued vehemently for an end to ideology, “ideas,” abstractions—and even professors. But both have had a philosophical bent. Taken advantage of, it leads us away from specific works of literature, even away from literature

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Vincent Miller

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The Modern Tradition, edited by Richard Ellmann and Charles Feidelson, Jr. Oxford, $13.75 Thirty years ago English professors wrote books in which they called attention to themselves “closely reading” (or talking about closely reading) “the works themselves.” This was called “the new criticism”: a system of dissection charts and procedures which they were working out to circumvent Pound and Eliot, who had accomplished a revolution by suggesting that the professor remove himself, his slogans, and his antics, and let the students read the authors.

Today the situation is different and the threat comes from another quarter. The most significant-popular writers of the postwar period have been Camus and Sartre. Both have argued vehemently for an end to ideology, “ideas,” abstractions—and even professors. But both have had a philosophical bent. Taken advantage of, it leads us away from specific works of literature, even away from literature