Terrific piece. I don’t consider Pound and Fenollosa’s analysis of Chinese “misreading”. They made clear their analysis dealt with the 20% or so of Chinese which seems more ideogrammatic.
Hugh Kenner did not think of Uncle Ezra as “persona non grata”.
My gawd thanks for catching that last sentence. Pound would not even have been read by Snow, or if he was read, Snow didn’t notice how Pound esteemed Science; while for Kenner, RAW was apparently a “crank.” Fixed it. I think I finished that piece at 2AM, gave it a quick glance, then sent it out.
The way I operate is perhaps not wise: I work feverishly on something, finish it, give it a bleary-eyed editor’s read (though the writer can’t “see” their stuff at that point), and send it out.
The next day I read it and catch all kinds of typos, misspellings, and I add little bits here and there. Preferably humor. But you’re right: the idea that Kenner thought Pound was a non-entity is absurd. Glad someone pointed that out!
Or: I was totally baked when I wrote that and I offer that as my excuse.
With the ideogram “misreading” - an ultra-creative misreading, I think - Pound’s use of it in the sense of juxapositioning of text, including one paragraph after another in prose, seems like quite a drift from Chinese writing. I also read Pound’s use of Fenollosa as a fine example from Harold Bloom’s “misreading”: if it’s a misunderstanding, it’s floridly creative.
Isn’t creative misreading a major source of innovative thought? It’s not the only one, clearly, but I think it often goes unappreciated.
As a student in college English departments, I have often found teachers and students dismissive of Pound and Fenollosa’s ideas about Chinese language saying things like “That’s only true of 20% of the Chinese language.” Well, duh, Fenollosa and Pound said that. However, only about .00000001% of English and other Indo-European languages function ideogrammatically, hence the difference in how Chinese (and Chinese poetry) works.
When I began reading your piece and you mentioned Snow’s argument, I thought, “Why doesn’t science fiction count?” and then later on you get into it. Arthur C. Clarke has published “Childhood’s End” in 1953, and no less than Yukio Mishima called it a “masterpiece.” I was under the impression that at the time of Snow’s essay, Clarke would have been well-known, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is just another illustration of science fiction not being taken seriously as “literature” for many years?
Richard Powers is a more modern example of a writer who unites the two cultures, as most of his novels have a great deal of science and also are influenced by modernist literature.
Yes, Pynchon and Powers are great at transcending the Two Cultures problem. Literary agent John Brockman invented his Third Culture and I read all those books like other people eat popcorn, but he’s still on the side of Science, while inviting a few non-scientists - Douglas Rushkoff, Brian Eno and few other - to the table.
My impression from reading RAW is that Olaf Stapledon was a big thing for his own reading in the 1940s and early 1950s.
Terrific piece. I don’t consider Pound and Fenollosa’s analysis of Chinese “misreading”. They made clear their analysis dealt with the 20% or so of Chinese which seems more ideogrammatic.
Hugh Kenner did not think of Uncle Ezra as “persona non grata”.
My gawd thanks for catching that last sentence. Pound would not even have been read by Snow, or if he was read, Snow didn’t notice how Pound esteemed Science; while for Kenner, RAW was apparently a “crank.” Fixed it. I think I finished that piece at 2AM, gave it a quick glance, then sent it out.
The way I operate is perhaps not wise: I work feverishly on something, finish it, give it a bleary-eyed editor’s read (though the writer can’t “see” their stuff at that point), and send it out.
The next day I read it and catch all kinds of typos, misspellings, and I add little bits here and there. Preferably humor. But you’re right: the idea that Kenner thought Pound was a non-entity is absurd. Glad someone pointed that out!
Or: I was totally baked when I wrote that and I offer that as my excuse.
With the ideogram “misreading” - an ultra-creative misreading, I think - Pound’s use of it in the sense of juxapositioning of text, including one paragraph after another in prose, seems like quite a drift from Chinese writing. I also read Pound’s use of Fenollosa as a fine example from Harold Bloom’s “misreading”: if it’s a misunderstanding, it’s floridly creative.
Isn’t creative misreading a major source of innovative thought? It’s not the only one, clearly, but I think it often goes unappreciated.
Your discussion of misreading seems reasonable.
As a student in college English departments, I have often found teachers and students dismissive of Pound and Fenollosa’s ideas about Chinese language saying things like “That’s only true of 20% of the Chinese language.” Well, duh, Fenollosa and Pound said that. However, only about .00000001% of English and other Indo-European languages function ideogrammatically, hence the difference in how Chinese (and Chinese poetry) works.
When I began reading your piece and you mentioned Snow’s argument, I thought, “Why doesn’t science fiction count?” and then later on you get into it. Arthur C. Clarke has published “Childhood’s End” in 1953, and no less than Yukio Mishima called it a “masterpiece.” I was under the impression that at the time of Snow’s essay, Clarke would have been well-known, but maybe I am wrong. Maybe this is just another illustration of science fiction not being taken seriously as “literature” for many years?
Richard Powers is a more modern example of a writer who unites the two cultures, as most of his novels have a great deal of science and also are influenced by modernist literature.
Yes, Pynchon and Powers are great at transcending the Two Cultures problem. Literary agent John Brockman invented his Third Culture and I read all those books like other people eat popcorn, but he’s still on the side of Science, while inviting a few non-scientists - Douglas Rushkoff, Brian Eno and few other - to the table.
My impression from reading RAW is that Olaf Stapledon was a big thing for his own reading in the 1940s and early 1950s.