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cflorescu33's review against another edition
3.0
Some good reflections on different works of literature across the centuries but nothing I haven't heard before. Really catchy writing style though
poppyflaxman's review against another edition
It has been so long since I have read a collection of essays about literature. It felt good to stretch my brain in that way. I am not sure if I agree with her overarching point though I enjoyed being with her on the journey there.
andforgotten's review against another edition
4.0
The last two essays were a bit of a letdown but I very much enjoyed the rest
ken_bookhermit's review against another edition
5.0
"Love, this truth tells us, like food or air, is necessary but insufficient: it cannot do for us what we must do for ourselves. Certainly, it can no longer act as an organizing principle. Romantic love now seems a yearning to dive down into feeling and come up magically changed; when what is required for the making of a self is the deliberate pursuit of consciousness. Knowing this to be the larger truth, as many of us do, the idea of love as a means of illumination—in literature as in life—now comes as something of an anticlimax."
What can I say? Vivian Gornick certainly had me by the throat through the entirety of this text. My being a sucker for literary criticism and writing about love shook me to my core, because the thesis of the entire collection has to do with understanding how now, love is not enough. And was it ever? Cutting to the truth of it, Gornick explores just how we as a culture is enthralled by the promise of love, except it just doesn't give us anything we expect anymore.
I did put that much stock on love—but not to the point where I am going to be changed (for "the better"), or that I will find out my real self through the eyes of the other, or through the passions that I would undergo in my experience of love. It speaks of a refusal to look into the self before you're even seen by the other, and that's just cringe to me. But still. To me, love is all.
In the majority of the essays, Gornick describes stories—both fictional and real—where the characters decide that love is not the end. Was it ever? Seems doubtful. Regardless, my entire experience of this collection is one that enlightens while simultaneously has me clutching to the ideal of love, not as the End All, but just because I love love for love's sake.
Attached are the texts Gornick talks about per chapter, for my reference.
1) Diana of the Crossways
> Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
> Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
> The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
> Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith
2) Clover Adams
not so much as analysed, but as supporting evidence:
> Democracy & Esther by Henry Adams
3) Kate Chopin
> The Awakening
4) Jean Rhys
> Wide Sargasso Sea
5) Ruthless Intimacies
> Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
> The Unlit Lamp by Radclyffe Hall
> Mary Olivier by May Sinclair
6) Willa Cather
> The Troll Garden
> O Pioneers!
> The Song of the Lark
> My Antonia
> Death Comes for the Archbishop
> The Professor's House
> My Mortal Enemy
> Lucy Gayheart
7) Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
not so much as analysed as referenced:
> Being and Time
> Eichmann in Jerusalem
8) Christina Stead
> The Man who Loved Children
> The Little Hotel
> I'm Dying Laughing
9) Grace Paley
> "An Interest in Life"
> "The Pale Pink Roast"
> "Faith in the Afternoon"
> "Wants"
10) Tenderhearted Men
> (I'm not going to read Raymond Carver again)
> The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
> Voices from the Moon by Andre Dubus
> Adultery
> We Don't Live Here Anymore
11) The End of the Novel of Love
> The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley
What can I say? Vivian Gornick certainly had me by the throat through the entirety of this text. My being a sucker for literary criticism and writing about love shook me to my core, because the thesis of the entire collection has to do with understanding how now, love is not enough. And was it ever? Cutting to the truth of it, Gornick explores just how we as a culture is enthralled by the promise of love, except it just doesn't give us anything we expect anymore.
I did put that much stock on love—but not to the point where I am going to be changed (for "the better"), or that I will find out my real self through the eyes of the other, or through the passions that I would undergo in my experience of love. It speaks of a refusal to look into the self before you're even seen by the other, and that's just cringe to me. But still. To me, love is all.
In the majority of the essays, Gornick describes stories—both fictional and real—where the characters decide that love is not the end. Was it ever? Seems doubtful. Regardless, my entire experience of this collection is one that enlightens while simultaneously has me clutching to the ideal of love, not as the End All, but just because I love love for love's sake.
Attached are the texts Gornick talks about per chapter, for my reference.
1) Diana of the Crossways
> Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
> Daniel Deronda by George Eliot
> The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton
> Diana of the Crossways by George Meredith
2) Clover Adams
not so much as analysed, but as supporting evidence:
> Democracy & Esther by Henry Adams
3) Kate Chopin
> The Awakening
4) Jean Rhys
> Wide Sargasso Sea
5) Ruthless Intimacies
> Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence
> The Unlit Lamp by Radclyffe Hall
> Mary Olivier by May Sinclair
6) Willa Cather
> The Troll Garden
> O Pioneers!
> The Song of the Lark
> My Antonia
> Death Comes for the Archbishop
> The Professor's House
> My Mortal Enemy
> Lucy Gayheart
7) Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger
not so much as analysed as referenced:
> Being and Time
> Eichmann in Jerusalem
8) Christina Stead
> The Man who Loved Children
> The Little Hotel
> I'm Dying Laughing
9) Grace Paley
> "An Interest in Life"
> "The Pale Pink Roast"
> "Faith in the Afternoon"
> "Wants"
10) Tenderhearted Men
> (I'm not going to read Raymond Carver again)
> The Sportswriter by Richard Ford
> Voices from the Moon by Andre Dubus
> Adultery
> We Don't Live Here Anymore
11) The End of the Novel of Love
> The Age of Grief by Jane Smiley
atadasi's review against another edition
4.0
“For a hundred and fifty years in the West the idea of romantic love has been emblematic of the search for self-understanding.”
in this book, Vivian Gornick ruminates on the authors and literature that reveal that to seek one’s self by seeking love is to lose oneself or, as she writes brilliantly in her essay on Clover Adams, is to become incased in ice, so thick that not even your lover’s passion could melt it. Like much of Gornick’s writing, this book is direct and insightful. She engenders a desire to read and write endlessly, and her focus on writers that maybe don’t always get the spotlight or texts that have something to offer despite lack of general brilliance, make it more enjoyable.
in this book, Vivian Gornick ruminates on the authors and literature that reveal that to seek one’s self by seeking love is to lose oneself or, as she writes brilliantly in her essay on Clover Adams, is to become incased in ice, so thick that not even your lover’s passion could melt it. Like much of Gornick’s writing, this book is direct and insightful. She engenders a desire to read and write endlessly, and her focus on writers that maybe don’t always get the spotlight or texts that have something to offer despite lack of general brilliance, make it more enjoyable.
fearandtrembling's review against another edition
3.0
I'm going to be lazy and simply link to Nicholas' review because it's good and summarises quite well what was left out of Gornick's discussion.
This is a book I wish I had read about ten years ago because it's rich, full of unpredictable insights, particularly the sections where she talks about the anxieties and erotics of the mother-daughter bond (or trap, as it might be). It made me want to seek out lesser-known works by well known writers (Radclyffe Hall's The Unlit Lamp, Willa Cather's Song of the Lark and also books I'd never heard of, like George Meredith's Diana of the Crossways and May Sinclair's Mary Olivier).
I'm stumped, though, by her discussion of Arendt and Heidegger, which I think boils down to "sex, or an erotic attachment fused with mental compatibility, leads to bad judgment" which I suppose can be true but seems to let Arendt off the hook (and doesn't take into account her politics, and the role it might have played in her relationship with Heidegger and her subsequent defence of his position). In other words, there might be more to Arendt's susceptibility to Heidegger's vile politics than mere "the sex was good"/"the mind sex was even better", etc. I'm being unfair to Gornick here but it generally reads this way.
Then, there is the matter of Gornick's disillusionment with communism, which, ehhhh. No.
This is a book I wish I had read about ten years ago because it's rich, full of unpredictable insights, particularly the sections where she talks about the anxieties and erotics of the mother-daughter bond (or trap, as it might be). It made me want to seek out lesser-known works by well known writers (Radclyffe Hall's The Unlit Lamp, Willa Cather's Song of the Lark and also books I'd never heard of, like George Meredith's Diana of the Crossways and May Sinclair's Mary Olivier).
I'm stumped, though, by her discussion of Arendt and Heidegger, which I think boils down to "sex, or an erotic attachment fused with mental compatibility, leads to bad judgment" which I suppose can be true but seems to let Arendt off the hook (and doesn't take into account her politics, and the role it might have played in her relationship with Heidegger and her subsequent defence of his position). In other words, there might be more to Arendt's susceptibility to Heidegger's vile politics than mere "the sex was good"/"the mind sex was even better", etc. I'm being unfair to Gornick here but it generally reads this way.
Then, there is the matter of Gornick's disillusionment with communism, which, ehhhh. No.