West is West...Nathanael,That Is...

This is from Ray McDaniel's review of Dancing in Odessa, as published in Constant Critic:

"I worship at the altar of Miss Lonelyhearts, because I think it articulates the challenge of having a soul, and I admire the force and candor with which the novel recognizes that challenge. But while I could appreciate the sentiment of that effort, I could not be transfigured by the experience of reading Miss Lonelyhearts if the language in which it is written were less transfixing. A beautiful language, that novel has: bitter, sharp, odd, and also intimate in the way vernacular must be, but bold and lucid when the time for lucidity finally comes.The point is that the intent to transfigure cannot be uncoupled from the ability to transfix. Attention to language is the step that cannot be skipped..."

Transfiguration and transfixation are coupled just as Miss Lonelyhearts (the transfigured--in many, many ways) and Shrike (literally the transfixer--note what the bird does to its prey) are linked....I've got to think about this a little more, but this is a smart way to approach poetry, too. I don't know if I'd agree with McDaniel's review of Dancing in Odessa--I'll have to find the book and see.

BTW--regarding my distant literary past--I can remember proposing an honors paper on Nathanael West and being told he wasn't "good enough to write about. " (At that time, the early 1980s, West was not taught in any of the literature surveys or specialized classes at my university). I was dumbfounded then and showed it, much to my adviser's amusement. I ended up writing about Keats' odes instead. Now there's a topic untrammeled...

Pamela