Jim Paul, The Rune Poem (Chronicle, 1996)

Another translation of the Rune Poem, this one rather nicely illustrated, in a mass-market height hardback from Chronicle Books. Paul adds nothing to Rune Poem scholarship, nor does he shed new light, but I doubt that was the intention with this book; it seemed more aimed at exposing the poem to those who had never seen it before, while showing those who wanted to do further research the avenues with which to do so (he refers repeatedly to Maureen Halsall's critical study often in this text). Good if you're interested and don't already have a copy, and can usually be had cheap; if you already own a translation of the Rune Poem or any of the critical works on the subject, you can pass on this safely. ***

I am bemused and rather disappointed with this book. Muldoon uses intertextual associativeness to generate wonderful poems -- touching, comic, and stylistically breath-taking. Here he uses the same method in a critical rhapsody that links together a galaxy of Irish literary texts and legends, arranged (or disarranged) in alphabetical order. He moves freely and funnily between Gaelic and English, ancient and modern, biographical and textual. The performance is carried off with brio, in a manner that recalls certain experiments in randomness of Roland Barthes. Unfortunately, many of the allusions Muldoon finds are so farfetched as to make one wince as at a bad pun. He circles around Joyce's "The Dead," adding one or two valid observations to what allusion-hunters have already noted, but otherwise sending readers off on a wild goose chase. Unlike Seamus Heaney, who is a great, authoritative, and highly trained literary critic, Muldoon does not project from his distinctive poetic sensibility a capacious literary critical vision. He flogs to death the idea of "conglomewriting" as a distinctively Irish practice, culminating in Finnegans Wake, but he offers little serious reflection on what the literary value of this practice might be. For that one must turn to works like Gerard Genette's Palimpsestes, which offers a careful and thorough examination of the ancient art of intertextual composition. Professorial pedants will find consolation in the thought that poets may need their services after all.

....men in suits could kick drunks on the street
....brilliant kids could stop speaking to their parents
....welfare mothers could just get their acts together
....kids would just follow the rules
....the strong could get rid of the weak

All would be well for this book.

....Nada. One of the characteristics of a PoMo writer is his shifting of shapes. Cantor slips from the shape of the traditional critic reading Hamlet line-by-line to that of the critic tackling the most PoMo of topics--a TV show like Gilligan's Isle. Such shifting presumes a certain above-it-all divinity in which Cantor is in all shapes (close reading/cultural studies//canonical/pop culture//Hamlet/Gilligan's Isle) and in no shapes. Downright nihilistic, one might say...

This is a great introduction to the play within a Reniassance context. The author does an admirable job in reconstructing the historical and literary contexts surrounding Hamlet. For example, the conflict which the play embodies between classical ideals of heroism and Christian skepticism is well-developed. Overall, this is the best place to begin any study of Hamlet, and it may be all you'll need. The language is clear and concise, in contrast to the pompous jargon-laden prose of so many "post-modern'" critics. Well-written, well-argued, well-informed: one of the best works available on this quintessential Renaissance play.

Between what this book could do and what it does there is a shortfall. It is a useful and indeed detailed survey of a large number of works with either homosexual texts or subtexts. What there is little of, however, is any real sense of either purpose or argument. There is a basic premise that Homosexuality has been codified since time inmemorial, but this does little to give the book any sort of through-line. Individual chapters, particularly that on the renaissance, which alone could fill a small library with books on male-male love in the period, seem to almost pass their subjects by. Either the book should have been much longer or much shorter. it falls between the stools as an over-padded short look at the subject, which is a pity.

"It is the moment of non-construction, disclosing the absentation of actuality from the concept in part through its invitation to emphasize, in reading, the helplessness--rather than the will to power--of its fall into conceptuality."

That is pretty much the kind of thing you can expect from this book--formulations that follow the meandering course of Paul Fry's thought, as he stumbles flailing after his own pretty, fluttering reflection on the "occasion of reading", which--alas--escapes both him and us. Paul Fry stands blinking in the sunlight, his butterfly net empty and his tongue unloosened.

A Defense of Poetry is possibly the most irrelevant book I've ever read or even looked at. Paul Fry needs to rouse himself from his stupor and realize that his entire career has been a very long waste of time.

The "occasion" of writing: how pretty!