Film Studies Publications
Title
Pynchon's Aesthetic Radicalism
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-1986
Issue
160
Journal
New Left Review
First Page
122
Last Page
128
Abstract
Terry Eagleton’s recent article on ‘Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism’ (nlr 152) concludes one of its sections with the following sweeping, brilliant statement: ‘The autonomous, self-regarding, impenetrable modernist artefact, in all its isolated splendour, is the commodity as fetish resisting the commodity as exchange, its solution to reification part of that very problem.’ Apt as this is, its very sweepingness is problematic. All modernist literature is condemned as in thrall either to fetishism or to reification. One is left wondering whether or not Eagleton considers any recent authors worth reading (perhaps Walter Benjamin scrapes through, but then he, like Eagleton, is a critic . . .). His gesture almost rivals the notorious Leavisite dismissal of post-war literature for barrenness. So who are we left with? Which authors can be said not only not to hinder the Marxist project, but actually to promote it?
Notes
Dr. Paul Coates is currently a faculty member at The University of Western Ontario.