“You Had to be a Crank to Insist On Being Right”: Saul Bellow’s Comedy

IF 0.5 2区文学 0 LITERATURE

STUDIES IN THE NOVEL Pub Date : 2023-06-01 DOI:10.1353/sdn.2023.a899470

A. Dean

引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract:The article considers the nature and value of comic expression in Saul Bellow’s Mr. Sammler’s Planet (1970). It begins by taking note of the many public statements Bellow made about the stifling qualities of what he came to call “low seriousness,” the mode he saw as alive in mid-century literary reception. It then shows how Bellow’s comic strategies revise his otherwise overwhelming tendency toward public intellectualizing—and how these ultimately ground a case for literary distinctiveness. The article then focuses on how Mr. Sammler’s Planet makes a mockery of instrumentalized understandings of the legacies of the Shoah, of whatever stripe. This in turn troubles critical attempts to translate the book into some specific political or moral insight. This article demonstrates how the novel levels disturbing thoughts about the ultimate irredeemability of recent history, as we experience all forms of seriousness being stalked by the ghosts of unseriousness.

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“你必须成为一个曲柄才能坚持正确”：索尔·贝娄的喜剧

摘要：本文探讨了索尔·贝娄的《萨姆勒先生的星球》（1970）中喜剧表达的本质和价值。它首先注意到贝娄发表的许多公开声明，这些声明都是关于他所说的“低严肃性”的令人窒息的品质，他认为这种模式在本世纪中叶的文学接受中很活跃。然后，它展示了贝娄的喜剧策略是如何改变他原本压倒性的公众智能化倾向的，以及这些策略最终是如何为文学独特性奠定基础的。然后，这篇文章聚焦于萨姆勒先生的《星球》如何嘲弄对幕府遗产的工具化理解，无论是什么样的遗产。这反过来又阻碍了将这本书翻译成某种特定政治或道德见解的批判性尝试。这篇文章展示了这部小说如何唤起人们对近代史最终不可挽回性的不安思考，因为我们经历了各种形式的严肃，被不严肃的鬼魂跟踪。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

STUDIES IN THE NOVEL LITERATURE-

CiteScore

0.40

自引率

0.00%

发文量

期刊介绍： From its inception, Studies in the Novel has been dedicated to building a scholarly community around the world-making potentialities of the novel. Studies in the Novel started as an idea among several members of the English Department of the University of North Texas during the summer of 1965. They determined that there was a need for a journal “devoted to publishing critical and scholarly articles on the novel with no restrictions on either chronology or nationality of the novelists studied.” The founding editor, University of North Texas professor of contemporary literature James W. Lee, envisioned a journal of international scope and influence. Since then, Studies in the Novel has staked its reputation upon publishing incisive scholarship on the canon-forming and cutting-edge novelists that have shaped the genre’s rich history. The journal continues to break new ground by promoting new theoretical approaches, a broader international scope, and an engagement with the contemporary novel as a form of social critique.