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Toward a Radical Middle |
| Section: BOOK WORLD / REVIEWS |
| Author: Thomas DePietro |
| Publication:
The World & I Online |
| Issue Date: 1/1/1993 |
| Size: 2,882 Words, 18,918 Characters |
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DOUBLE AGENT
The Critic and Society
Morris Dickstein
New York: Oxford, 1992
256 pp., $24.95
THE CRITICS BEAR IT AWAY
American Fiction and the Academy
Frederick Crews
New York: Random House, 1992
192pp., $20.00
By now, we all know the story. Western civilization is going down the tubes, and it's being shoved there by tenured left-wing university professors. When these illiberal educational commissars aren't trashing the Great Books, they're indoctrinating our kids in political correctness. Recent conservatives visitors to the academy tell us the same thing: In humanities courses from Stanford to Duke, hip professors no longer discuss the timeless verities of beauty and truth but proselytize about the topical troika of race, class, and gender. No wonder those of us who care about literature and ideas have felt the need to choose sides in this raging Kulturkampf. But have these well-meaning reports from the front lines been misleading those of us in the rear guard?
Both Morris Dickstein and Frederick Crews believe that to be the case. And they should know. As distinguished professor of English one in multicultural New York, the other in the People's republic of Berkeley--they're right in the thick of the action. By the same token, these two self-proclaimed critical "pluralists" have an obvious self-interest in assuaging our worst fears of what goes on bicoastally in prominent English departments. If the conservative yahoos clamoring at the gates are demanding equal time for traditional studies, then even the liberal Crews and Dickstein might be tempted to close ranks with their left flank. After all, who wants to get the silent treatment at the departmental coffee urn?
We needn't ascribe such venal motives to either Dickstein or Crews: Both aspire to a level of critical disinterest that allows them to follow ideas wherever they ...
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...hope of making something new. I believe that critics, without abandoning their sense of history, should be ready for a parallel if lesser effort, putting preconceptions in abeyance and then and then following the writer's individual path wherever it may lead." In this literate and learned book, Crews proves the model double agent. The center here is holding, and there is cause to celebrate.
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Publication Details
(The World & I Online) |
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The World & I Online is a
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articles by scholars and experts in the areas of Global Studies,
Liberal Arts, Fine & Applied Arts, General Science, and Spanish.
Originally published monthly in print as The World & I, our site
includes the complete contents since 1986 and continues to publish
a new issue online each month. |
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