What would characterize a literary rockist?

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Only likes the canon? Disdains science fiction? Distinguishes between literature and Literature? What say you all?

― grab bag, Tuesday, 12 April 2005 22:35 (twenty years ago)

Looks like John Housman. Thinks like me.

― Aimless (Aimless), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 01:22 (twenty years ago)

http://www.barcelonareview.com/30/bloom.jpg

― W i l l (common_person), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 01:41 (twenty years ago)

type A) only likes clear & classic from the canon.
type B) only likes experimentalism that challenges the notion of novelistic genre.

aka mojo vs. pigfuck

― Sterling Clover (s_clover), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 01:53 (twenty years ago)

anyone who's astonished by your lack of familiarity with contemporary literature in translation

― David Elinsky (David Elinsky), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 02:47 (twenty years ago)

Assaults neighbor for advertising his small business with a misspelled sign? No, that would be a proofreading rockist.

― Ann Sterzinger (Ann Sterzinger), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 04:06 (twenty years ago)

But you wouldn't want a proofreading pop-ist.

Literary rockists hate Dan Brown.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 04:50 (twenty years ago)

W i l l is OTM re: Bloom.

― Jerry the Nipper (Jerrynipper), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 08:07 (twenty years ago)

Doesn't everybody hate Dan Brown?

― Ray (Ray), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 09:36 (twenty years ago)

Tom Wolfe.

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 12:49 (twenty years ago)

literary rockists are catholics.

literary rockists hate this one thing that i like.

― i assume 'he' is joking, Wednesday, 13 April 2005 14:59 (twenty years ago)

"Rockism" seems pretty much rooted in Romanticism to me. Authenticity/sincerity of feeling as the key measure of value. The artist as outsider/shaman/spokesman for the disenfranchised. The values that would have made a critic prefer Wordsworth to Dryden are very close to the values that rock critics found in Lennon/Dylan/Hendrix and a tradition going back through blues, folk and so on.

― frankiemachine, Wednesday, 13 April 2005 16:59 (twenty years ago)

With all due respect, we should probably count the guy who said "Who is the Tolstoy of the Zulus?"

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 17:37 (twenty years ago)

Two more:
Edmund Wilson
George Steiner

― Ken L (Ken L), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 17:39 (twenty years ago)

"You gotta live the life you write about"
So basically Lermontov and Kesey are the most rokken of all.

"Ugh, Atwood's trying to write science fiction now. Everyone knows these literary types don't GET IT"

"I'd *never* read [author] in paperback."

― Øystein (Øystein), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 18:57 (twenty years ago)

uh frankie pls tell me that was just a roundabout way of saying you find anti-rockism to be a bunch of baloney, because otherwise i am going to think you some kind of fascist.

― can we lock this thread, Wednesday, 13 April 2005 19:15 (twenty years ago)

I give about one and a half cheers for anti-Rockism. In practice it works as a corrective to some value-distorting critical shibboleths. As a theoretical position it seems full of holes, partly for the reasons I hinted at above, ie it is ahistorical and doesn't take into account what babies are being chucked out with the bathwater.

― frankiemachine, Thursday, 14 April 2005 07:37 (twenty years ago)

THEY HATE NICK HORNBY

― Markelby (Mark C), Thursday, 14 April 2005 12:51 (twenty years ago)

Hm - suddenly this complicates matters.

― the bellefox, Thursday, 14 April 2005 15:19 (twenty years ago)

Someone who cares about this question. ;)

― M. White (Miguelito), Thursday, 14 April 2005 16:27 (twenty years ago)

Who, the pinefox?

Oh, I see.

― Ken L (Ken L), Thursday, 14 April 2005 16:30 (twenty years ago)

Assaults neighbor for advertising his small business with a misspelled sign? No, that would be a proofreading rockist.

-- Ann Sterzinger (asterzinger@chicagoreader.com) (webmail), April 13th, 2005 1:06 AM. (Ann Sterzinger) (later) (link)

― Open your eyes; you can fly! (ex machina), Thursday, 14 April 2005 21:11 (twenty years ago)

anyone who's astonished by your lack of familiarity with contemporary literature in translation

Actually, I might say that a rockist position would be to discount translated literature.

Because the translation subverts the authorial intent; it is an additional interpretation.

"To translate is to betray" and "poetry is what gets lost in translation" seem like literary-rockist positions to me.

― The Mad Puffin, Wednesday, 20 April 2005 13:59 (twenty years ago)

I thought of this thread while reading Hollinghurst's Line of Beauty. If Harold Bloom is "rockist" so is Nick Guest: his tastes in music, literature, art or architecture are purely canonical. He isn't totally conservative - he likes Kandinsky and Alban Berg - but his character is a reminder that even in young, fashionable London there is a world in which to revere the canon isn't to prefer the Rolling Stones to The Human League, but to think pop music unworthy of the serious attention of anyone with taste.

― frankiemachine, Tuesday, 26 April 2005 10:36 (twenty years ago)

"Actually, I might say that a rockist position would be to discount translated literature."

Or criticize your choice in translators. Oh, you're reading Dante translated by ____? He doesn't capture the true essence of the original work.

― Jessa (Jessa), Tuesday, 26 April 2005 14:23 (twenty years ago)

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