Elegaic ripples continue to spread following the recent death of author Hugh Kenner, and Robert Fulford has a sympathetic portrait in Canada's National Post.
... [Kenner] refused to accept the existence of a natural antipathy between engineering and the humanities. In one excellent little book, The Mechanic Muse, he wrote a detailed, affectionate essay about the now-vanished linotype machine, which made modern literary culture and journalism possible. He followed carefully the influence of mechanical inventions on literature, not only in obvious cases (Hemingway's prose reflecting the invention of the typewriter) but also Eliot's position as "chief poet of the alarm clock," the writer who depicted the world of work and commuting regulated by the clock.Kenner was a worldly philosopher. In his view, science and literature, far from being antagonists, moved side by side into the future as partners, each interpreting or enhancing the other, each taking its place as part of modernity. Their relationship, and their place in our lives, illustrated a central message of Kenner's work: Do not send to ask what Joyce and Beckett are writing about; they are writing about you.
Jeet Heer remembers the days when politically-oriented journals like National Review still included serious literary and cultural ideas in their coverage, with gifted writers like Kenner and Guy Davenport as contributors, but debunks the idea that Kenner was some kind of traditional right-winger.
In short, Kenner was a slippery writer who evades any easy political labeling. Rather than placing him on the left-right spectrum, it would be better to describe him as a collector of marginalized thinkers and artists: He loved to demonstrate that figures who were dismissed as cranks or freaks did work that has coherence and value. During his lifetime, Kenner's crank collection included Marshall McLuhan, Louis Zukofsky, Buckminster Fuller, and Chuck Jones, as well as Pound and Lewis. Some of these figures were right-wingers, but their real commonality is that they tend to be undervalued or misunderstood.Posted by Alan at December 3, 2003 07:40 PMvia Slate