Modern Mind: An Intellectual History of the 20th Century

CHAPTER 26: CRACKS IN THE CANON

1. Peter Ackroyd, T. S. Eliot, Op. cit., page 289.

2. T. S. Eliot, Notes Toward the Definition of Culture, London: Faber & Faber, 1948, paperback 1962.

3. Ackroyd, Op. cit., page 291.

4. For a discussion of Eliot’s wider thinking on leisure, see: Sencourt, ? S. Eliot: A Memoir, Op. cit., page 154.

5. Eliot, Notes, Op. cit., page 31.

6. Ibid., page 23.

7. Ibid., page 43.

8. He was conscious himself, he said, of being a European, as opposed to a merely British, or American, figure. See: Sencourt, Op. cit., page 158.

9. Eliot, Notes, Op. cit., page 50.

10. Ibid., pages 87ff.

11. Ibid., page 25.

12. Ian MacKillop, F. R. Leavis, Op. cit., pages 15 and 17ff.

13. F. R. Leavis, The Great Tradition, London: Chatto & Windus, 1948; F. R. Leavis. The Common Pursuit, London: Chatto & Windus, 1952.

14. See Leavis, The Common Pursuit, chapter 14, for the links between sociology and literature, which Leavis was sceptical about; and chapter 23 for ‘Approaches to T. S. Eliot,’ where he counts ‘Ash Wednesday’ as the work which changed Eliot’s standing. (And see the Conclusion of this book, below, page 750.)

15. MacKillop, Op. cit., page 111. See in particular chapter 8, pages 263ff, on the future of criticism.

16. Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination, New York: Macmillan, 1948 London: Secker & Warburg, 1951.

17. Ibid., page 34.

18. Ibid., pages 288ff.

19. Henry S. Commager, The American Mind: An Interpretation of American Thought and Character Since the 1880s, New York: Oxford University Press, 1950.

20. Ibid., pages 199ff and 227fr

21. Ibid., pages 176–177.

22. Ibid., pages 378ff.

23. Jamison and Eyerman, Seeds of the Sixties, Op. cit., pages 150–151.

24. Ibid., page 150.

25. Trilling’s wife described the relationship as ‘quasi-Oedipal.’ See: Graham Caveney, Screaming with Joy: The Life of Allen Ginsberg, London: Bloomsbury, 1999, page 33.

26. Jamison and Eyerman, Op. cit., page 152.

27. Barry Miles, Ginsberg: A Biography, New York: Viking, 1990, page 196.

28. Ibid., page 192.

29. Jamison and Eyerman, Op. cit., page 156.

30. Ibid., pages 158–159.

31. See Miles, Op. cit., page 197 for Ferlinghetti’s reaction to the Howl reading.

32. Ann Charters, Kerouac: A Biography, London: André Deutsch, 1974, pages 24–25. Kerouac broke his leg and never reached the first team, a failure, she says, that he never came to terms with.

33. Jack Kerouac, On the Road, New York: Viking, 1957, Penguin paperback 1991, Introduction by Ann Charters, page x.

34. Ibid., pages viii and ix.

35. Ibid., page xx.

36. Charters, Kerouac: A Biography, Op. cit., pages 92–97.

37. Kerouac took so much benzedrine in 1945 that he developed thrombophlebitis in his legs. See ibid., page 52.

38. For a brief history of bepop, see: Gerald Nicosia, Memory Babe: A Critical Biography of Jack Kerouac, New York: Grove Press, 1983, page 112. Regarding the argument, they made up later, ‘sort of. See pages 690–691.

39. Charters, ‘Introduction,’ Op. cit., page xxviii.

40. See: Jamison and Eyerman, Op. cit., page 159.

41. Alan Freed interview in New Musical Express, 23 September 1956, quoted in: Richard Aquila, That Old Time Rock’n’Roll: A Chronicle of an Era, 1954–1963, New York: Schirmer, 1989, page 5.

42. Donald Clarke, The Rise and Fall of Popular Music, New York: Viking, 1995, Penguin 1995, page 373.

43. Aquila, Op. cit., page 6.

44. Clarke, Op. cit., page 370, which says it was definitely not the first.

45. It wasn’t only imitation of course. See: Simon Frith, Performing Rites: Evaluating Popular Music, Oxford: Oxford University Press, page 195, for Presley’s sexuality.

46. Aquila, Op. cit., page 8.

47. See Frith, Op. cit., passim, for charts and popular music marketing categories.

48. Arnold Goldman, ‘A Remnant to Escape: The American Writer and the Minority Group,’ in Marcus Cunliffe (editor), The Penguin History of Literature, Op. cit., pages 302–303.

49. Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man, London: Gollancz, 1953, Penguin 1965. Goldman, Op. cit., page 303.

50. Jamison and Eyerman, Op. cit., page 160.

51. James Campbell, Talking at the Gates: A Life of James Baldwin, London: Faber & Faber, 1991, page 117.

52. Jamison and Eyerman, Op. cit., page 163.

53. Campbell, Op. cit., page 228.

54. Ibid., page 125, quoted in Jamison and Eyerman, Op. cit., page 166.

55. Colin MacInness, Absolute Beginners, London: Allison & Busby, 1959; Mr Love and Justice, London: Allison & Busby, 1960.

56. See for example: Michael Dash, ‘Marvellous Realism: The Way out of Négritude,’ in Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (editors) The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, London and New York: Routledge, 1995, page 199.

57. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Chinua Achebe: A Biography, Oxford: James Currey and Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1997, page 60. See also: Gilbert Phelps, ‘Two Nigerian Writers: Chinua Achebe and Wole Soyinka,’ in Boris Ford (editor), The New Pelican Guide to English Literature, volume 8: From Orwell to Naipaul, London: Penguin, 1983, pages 319–331.

58. Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart, New York: Doubleday, 1959, Anchor paperback, 1994. Phelps, Op. cit., page 320.

59. Ezenwa-Ohaeto, Op. cit., page 66. Phelps, Op. cit., page 321.

60. Ibid., pages 66ff for an account of the various drafts of the book and Achebe’s initial attempts to have it published. Phelps, Op. cit., page 323.

61. See: Claude Lévi-Strauss and Didier Eribon, Conversations with Lévi-Strauss, Op. cit., page 145, for Lévi-Strauss’s views on the evolution of anthropology in the twentieth century. See also: Leach, Op. cit., page 9.

62. Edmund Leach, Lévi-Strauss, London: Fontana, 1974, page 13.

63. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques, Paris: Plon, 1955; Mythologiques I: Le cru et le cuit, Paris: Plon, 1964. Translated as: The Raw and the Cooked, London: Jonathan Cape, 1970, volume I of The Science of Mythology; volume II, From Honey to Ashes, London: Jonathan Cape, 1973. Lévi-Strauss told Eribon that he thought psychoanalysis, or at least Totem and Taboo, was ‘a failure.’ See: Eribon and Lévi-Strauss, Op. cit., page 106.

64. Leach, Op. cit., page 60.

65. Ibid., page 63.

66. Ibid., pages 82ff.

67. When Margaret Mead visited Paris, Claude Lévi-Strauss introduced her to Simone de Beauvoir. ‘They didn’t say a word to one another.’ Eribon and Lévi-Strauss, Op. cit., page 12.

68. Basil Davidson, Old Africa Rediscovered, London: Gollancz, 1959.

69. Oliver Neville, ‘The English Stage Company and the Drama Critics,’ in Ford (editor), Op. cit., page 251.

70. Ibid., page 252. Osborne’s own account of reading the all is in John Osborne, A Better Class of Person: Autobiography 1929–1956, London: Faber & Faber, 1981, page 275.

71. Neville, Op. cit., pages 252–253.

72. Peter Mudford, ‘Drama since 1950’, in Dodsworth (editor), The Penguin History of Literature, Op. cit., page 396.

73. For the autobiographical overlap of the play, see: Osborne, Op. cit., pages 239ff.

74. Mudford, Op. cit., page 395.

75. Ibid.

76. Michael Hulse, ‘The Movement’, in Ian Hamilton (editor), The Oxford Companion to Twentieth-Century Poetry, Op. cit., page 368.

77. Mudford, Op. cit., page 346.

78. For Larkin’s library career, his reactions to it, and his feelings of timidity, see: Andrew Motion, Philip Larkin: A Writer’s Life, London: Faber & Faber, 1993, page 109ff. For other details about Larkin discussed in this section, see respectively: Alastair Fowler, ‘Poetry since 1950,’ in Dodsworth (editor), Op. cit., page 346; and Motion, Op. cit., pages 242–243 and 269, about publicity in The Times. Seamus Heaney’s poem, published as part of ‘A Tribute’ to Philip Larkin, George Hartley (editor), London: The Marvel] Press, 1988, page 39, ended with the line, ‘A nine-to-five man who had seen poetry.’

79. For the ‘helpless bystander’ quote see Michael Kirkham, ‘Philip Larkin and Charles Tomlinson: Realism and Art’ in Boris Ford (ed.), From Orwell to Naipaul, vol. 8, New Pelican Guide to English Literature, London: Penguin, revised edn 1995, pages 286–289. Blake Morrison, ‘Larkin,’ in Hamilton (editor), Op. cit., page 288.

80. Richard Hoggart, A Sort of Clowning: Life and Times, volume II, 1940–59, London: Chatto & Windus, 1990, page 175.

81. Leavis said the book ‘had some value’ but that Hoggart ‘should have written a novel.’ See: Hoggart, Op. cit., page 206.

82. Richard Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy, London: Chatto & Windus, 1957.

83. Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, London: Chatto & Windus, 1958.

84. For a good discussion see: Fred Inglis, Cultural Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993, pages 52–56; and Fred Inglis, Raymond Williams, London and New York: Routledge, 1995, pages 162ff.

85. Stefan Collini, ‘Introduction’ to: C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959, paperback 1969 and 1993, page vii.

86. Ibid.

87. Ibid., page viii. The fee for Snow’s lecture was 9 guineas (ie, 9.4p), the same rate as when the lecture was established in 1525. See: Philip Snow, Stranger and Brother: A Portrait of C. P. Snow, London: Macmillan, 1982, page 117.

88. Ibid., page 35. See also Collini, Op. cit., page xx.

89. C. P. Snow, Op. cit., page 14.

90. Ibid., page 18.

91. Ibid., pages 29ff

92. Ibid., page 34.

93. Ibid., pages 41ff.

94. MacKillop, Op. cit., page 320.

95. He was also ill. See: Philip Snow, Op. cit., page 130.

96. Collini, Op. cit., pages xxxiiiff. This essay, 64 pages, is recommended. Among other things, it relates Snow’s lecture to the changing map of the disciplines in the last half of the century.

97. Lionel Trilling, ‘A comment on the Leavis-Snow Controversy,’ Universities Quarterly, volume 17, 1962, pages 9–32. Collini, Op. cit., pages xxxviiiff.

98. The subject was first debated on television in 1968. See: Philip Snow, Op. cit., page 147.