Wired Mesh

At Dusk When Work is Over, We'll Continue the Debate

Steadfast Anglo-Canadian correspondent Julian has sent me a link to an interview with New Yorker film critic Anthony Lane, a piece that I had completely forgotten about even though I was reading it religiously about a year ago. I reached the height of my Lane devotion last spring, reading Nodody's Perfect, his anthology of reviews and essays, while I wrote my Senior Integration Paper at Covenant College. I had a little picture of Lane taped to my writing carrel in the school library, along with snapshots of Walker Percy, Michael Chabon and Gwyneth Paltrow (long story, that). I still like to think that the completion of that paper was due in equal parts to the muse of Lane and the lubrication of Pabst Blue Ribbons from Josiah's refrigerator.

I'm still moved by the power of Lane's argument for what he calls "cultural duty," the responsibilty of people to have the broadest possible understanding of the world around them, particularly the world of literature and arts. It makes so much of the Christian talk of "cultural engagement" seem like the half-hearted tripe that it is.

"What was so quaint about it all was that at its best it didn't feel like a duty. There is a piece about Matthew Arnold, and for him it really was a duty and you could sometimes find him straining to maintain pleasure in it. And it was interesting to find out that he wasn't as solemn as his writings would suggest. Later on, when movies came along, it was one of the rare times when duty was a pleasure. It has to be if is to be commonly shared. The Arnoldian influence lasted a very long time right up to [F.R.] Leavis really. Leavis was probably the last person who thought you were not adequately equipped, not only to pronounce on life but to entangle yourself with life, to take life head on unless you were armed with all literature could teach you. That seems to many people now, absurd. Certainly delivered with some absurd prejudices and with an almost laughable lack of humor. And yet, like much of what seemed excessive, it's worthy of some respect now...If you go back and read New Bearings in English Poetry, to him these things were events. It's like reading Axel's Castle, [Edmund] Wilson thought these things were general events which should matter to people and he thought they would alter the angle at which we looked upon the world and read the world. Talk about quaint, that must now seem..."

Meanwhile, WUTC is playing Belle and Sebastian's Piazza, New York Catcher, and I'm starting to feel somewhat melancholy. Par for the course, I suppose.