ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 14, 1996 TAG: 9604120019
SECTION: BOOKS PAGE: 4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY marshaLL FISHWICK
CULTURAL CONSERVATISM, POLITICAL LIBERALISM: From Criticism to Cultural Studies. By James Seaton. University of Michigan Press. No price listed.
This well-wrought, well-researched book tackles one of the major academic battles of our times, the culture wars. The purpose is set forth in the introduction: "to make a case for the continuing vitality of a tradition of cultural criticism obscured by present-day 'post-modernists' and deconstructionists. It endorses a tradition going back to Samuel Johnson and Matthew Arnold. It denounces, or at least criticizes, "contemporary cultural leftists" such as Richard Rorty, Fredric Jameson, Edward Said and Stanley Fish - all of whom agree that the past is not a corrective to the present but a source of error. The error, Seaton argues, is theirs.
In his conclusion, Seaton takes us back to Aristotle and the notion of the good life - "which requires not innocence but, rather, prudent judgment and practical wisdom." Where do we get this wisdom? Not only from our own personal experience, but also from the absorption of human experience embodied in literature, philosophy and religion. This humanist tradition in literary criticism is what Seaton is defending, and he does so with gusto and authority. He even provides names of those whom he thinks have championed it: Lionel Trilling, H.L. Mencken, Irving Babbit, Dwight MacDonald, Edmund Wilson, Diana Trilling and Ralph Ellison. They all believe that literature can aid us in the difficult art of life. They, and not their faddish detractors, are our best hope for the future. Seaton's case is carefully presented and well documented. There are twenty pages of notes and a full list of works cited. When he makes charges, he cites chapter and verse. When he makes charges, he cites chapter and verse. This is scholarship, not diatribe.
At the same time, it is written with passion and conviction. He does not take kindly to Stanley Fish, for example: "If Stanley Fish is a dangerous opponent, he is perhaps even more worrisome as an ally." And of Edward Said: "Said's problem is not that his background spans two cultures - that is, indeed, an advantage - but that his intellectual stance is based on a determination to avoid entangling alliances with any tradition at all." What would generally be called a "conservative defense" such as Seaton's has produced two best-sellers: E.D. Hirsch's "Cultural Literacy" and Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind." Their significance, Seaton argues, "derives from their attempts not simply to carry on the debate but also to redefine its terms." He finds flaws in both books, but concludes: "Whatever Bloom's flaws, he retained a sense of wonder, and of possibility, that goes far to redeem the limitations of his best-seller."
Seaton's book may not end up a best-seller, but it, too, argues well for that "sense of wonder" which is, by anyone's measurement, our priceless heritage and hope.
Marshall Fishwick's latest book is 2001+: The Future of the Millennium.
LENGTH: Medium: 57 linesby CNB