Creating Faulkner's Reputation: The Politics of Modern Literary Criticism by Lawrence H. Schwartz (review)

Abstract

254Rocky Mountain Review Grand Inquisitor's vast paternalistic scheme to bless mankind, the Ridiculous Man's vision of a celestial yet highly vulnerable society, or Shigalov's plan for world conquest in The Possessed. Great writers never create in a social vacuum. Indeed, the provocative issues and events of their immediate time and milieu serve as a needful catalyst to their thought. Chernyshevsky, we now realize, was, as much as anyone, the provocation for his various peers' more profound brooding and can in part be indirectly credited with the masterpieces he himself never authored. Without exaggeration, Paperno contends that, in his ultimate impact, no other Russian writer was nearly so influential. His sensational, simplistic ideas reinforced the discontent of many in his day. That Lenin and his brother before him highly revered Chernyshevsky's famed novel is a meaningful indication. THOMAS F. ROGERS Brigham Young University LAWRENCE H. SCHWARTZ. Creating Faulkner's Reputation: The Politics ofModern Literary Criticism. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988. 286 p. In 1944, when Malcolm Cowley started work on The Portable Faulkner (1946) to correct what he perceived to be fifteen years of critical misinterpretation and misrepresentation, the only Faulkner novel in print was Sanctuary. The narratives which today are almost universally accepted as literary masterpieces were out ofprint and unavailable, even in secondhand shops. By 1950, however, Faulkner had been awarded the Nobel Prize and had "become the major American literary voice of the mid-twentieth century" (10). This sudden and extraordinary shift in critical attitudes is the subject of Creating Faulkner's Reputation. In the course of his carefully researched and richly documented discussion, Schwartz goes a long way toward demythologizing the tired (and critically unsatisfying) story of how "truth" finally "won out and Faulkner gained the deserved recognition" (2). As he sees it, "Faulkner's reputation requires explanation; no more than any other historical event was it 'inevitable' " (7). Working from the basic premise that "the process of literary tastemaking can be isolated and identified, and that literary fame and reputation can be studied in the same way as any other historical phenomenon" (3), Schwartz "attempts to show how the confluence of literary, cultural, and commercial forces created and shaped Faulkner's literary reputation" (2). Apparently anticipating a hostile response to the aesthetic implications ofthis theoretical approach, Schwartz readily acknowledges that his conclusions are "not sympathetic to the main tendencies in Faulkner scholarship." Perhaps the most disturbing section, for some, will be where he talks about "the instability of aesthetic criteria" (2). According to Schwartz, "Literary reputations rise and Book Reviews255 fall dramatically because the critics reflect not universal, but relative, literary values which are, in large measure, historically determined" (3). This is not to suggest that Schwartz disputes the literary value of Faulkner's work, but rather it is a call for less naivete about the foundations of literary aesthetics and the process of canon formation. Schwartz builds his argument around four interrelated points. First, "there was a decided shift in the critical perception of Faulkner after the war." This revisionist movement was led by Cowley and Warren who rejected the negative assessment ofFaulkner offered by Marxist and "sociologically inclined critics " (3) ofthe 1930s. Second, there were important changes in the book publishing industry during the war which made cheap paperbacks possible and created a mass market for some ofFaulkner's books (i.e., those with popular, non-serious qualities: sex, violence, intrigue). This peddling of his books certainly gave Faulkner increased visibility, but not prominence. He remained in "second-rank status" until the case for a serious literary reputation was made by critics. Third, this critical reinterpretation of Faulkner took place in the context of postwar cultural realignments. The ideological confrontation between capitalism and communism called for an aesthetic distinct from that of the 1930s. The new literary consensus and dominant aesthetic were shaped by two principal literary elites, the New Critics and the New York intellectuals, while monetary support for projects that would advance their ideas was supplied by the Rockefeller Foundation. These groups "came together in the 1940s to set a cultural agenda, and they used and promoted Faulkner for their own ends." Finally, "with Faulkner serving the...