The Crisis in Criticism: Theory, Literature, and Reform in English Studies by William E. Cain

Abstract

262 Western American Literature Rudnick shares Mabel Dodge Luhan’s view of herself: as an exceptional woman who influenced important writers and artists like D. H. Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, Carl Van Vechten, and Ansel Adams. Luhan’s goal was to inspire the artists to produce great works with Taos as their spiritual source. She was not successful in that endeavor. Neither Lawrence nor the others wrote anything significant about New Mexico. Indeed, Rudnick’s evidence supports contemporary critics’ views of Mabel Dodge Luhan as an arrogant, pushy woman whose flights of mysticism and fantasy may have had a tem­ porary fascination on those around her but produced little of lasting value. Rudnick breaks up her chronological narrative with descriptions of fictional treatments of Luhan as well as descriptive passages on people such as John Collier, the advocate of Native American Indian culture. These inter­ ruptions disrupt the flow of the story and often raise more questions than they answer. Luhan’s intrusive behavior, for example, after Collier became Com­ missioner of Indian Affairs during the New Deal administration, is only briefly described and the reader wishes for more details. Rudnick claims that Mabel Dodge Luhan isa mirror of twentieth-century American culture. Luhan’s continuous search for self, her love of the new “isms” of this century such as Freudianism (she was psychoanalyzed by A. A. Brill, Freud’s patient) and Socialism, and her wish to return to nature were all traits shared by many intellectuals in this country and in Europe. She was not a feminist, though she knew many of the leading men and women who embraced feminism, including her friends Max Eastman and Hutchins and Neith Boyce Hapgood. Her view that women inspired male art rather than created it was an extremely old fashioned view, though she juxtaposed it with mystical preachings that gave it a seemingly new cast. Mabel Dodge Luhan was not a new woman nor an old woman. She was a rich woman whose imperious nature and culture allowed her to assert herself upon others as well as upon an environment. As hard as Lois Rudnick tries, she cannot make an essentially unattractive human being into a sympathetic character. JUNE SOCHEN Northeastern Illinois University The Crisis in Criticism: Theory, Literature, and Reform in English Studies. By William E. Cain. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984. 307 pages, $24.50.) This longish book treats selected problems in literary theory, contempor­ ary criticism, and higher education. The author first examines the notions and techniques of three notable critic/teachers: E. D. Hirsch (determinate meaning), J. Hillis Miller (deconstruction), and Stanley Fish (readerresponse ). Next, he discusses the glory and shame of subjectivity in literary interpretation, the emergence of New Criticism, and the institutionalization of close reading. Third, the author reviews major books of theory and criticism published (or reprinted) in the 1970s and 1980s. Finally, Cain charts his program for surmounting “the crisis in criticism.” Reviews 263 He laments the proliferation of literary theories away from a central set of critical and pedagogical concerns. Mindless or political acceptance of radical methodologies and critical slogans does not for Cain a “discipline” make. Rather, he tries to bridge the chasm between old-fashioned “close reading” and new-fangled “pure theory.” Hirsch, Miller, and Fish claim the author’s attention because of the discernible connection in their work between critical theory and classroom practice. Cain’s “history” of the institutionalization of New Criticism provides continuities and perspective, while his account of key books, trends, and issues of the past fifteen years makes for amplitude and point. Unlike many au courant theoreticians, Cain writes lucidly. Unfortu­ nately, his excessive reiterations—about a dozen portions of his book first appeared in journals—dilute his force. For all its logical arrangement, exten­ sive revisions, and elaborate transitions, The Crisis in Criticism has the look and feel of préfabrication. The parts loom larger than the whole. Still, Cain’s concentration on theory in relation to practice will appeal to English profes­ sors, at least to some. Cain’s adroit unveiling of ambiguities, contradictions, and errors in Hirsch, Miller, and Fish is valuable. Quite sensibly, too, Cain demonstrates that the New Criticism is...