a doll which, by an inexpensive mechanism, could be made to act insolently

Some good Kenneth Burke stuff (via Scott McLemee.) I like some bits from his novel, Towards a Better Life, although the title would be better for an essay. The opening of chapter 1 would be better if it were the opening of an essay. (I see a pattern forming.) The Testamentum Meum chapter, on the other hand, seems a serviceable common book of clear-eyed ressentiment, whatever the overall narrative context:

the liver gnawed by vultures, though you brought fire to no one.

if they cannot have religion, they should have lotteries.

I was but a harmless moth, made by its markings to look ferocious. I was a pumpkin to frighten children. Yet for this they have punished me.

if I could contrive some toy, such as a doll which, by an inexpensive mechanism, could be made to act insolently. Then I could take it to a man of enterprise - and if I were careful as to how the contract was worded, I might get substantial returns from the foolish thing.

they must train themselves in ingratitude, since they can live only by taking alms from the enemy - and how is the enemy to be vanquished unless they are prepared to bite the hand that feeds them?

I like the insolent toy best. It seems very red-blooded American, a good thing in my book.

Scott links as well to a Chron piece he wrote on Burke. I'm not up on my Burkology enough to judge the state of academic play, so I'll defer to his judgment.

Comments

[Richard]

http://www.hackfurby.com

[ben wolfson]

The post title sounds like it comes from the prior-art-o-matic.

[Scott McLemee]

That article on Burke is one of the first things I wrote after starting at the Chronicle. After almost four years, the thought of that headline about KB being "suddenly central" makes me cringe.

Here's the deal. I love KB -- he's a role model and major influence -- and had wanted to write about him for a long time with an eye to introducing him to people. (That's apart from all the notes taken on his novel, and on how much of his theoretical work seemed to grow out of it, or around it.)

Fortunately, there was a mass of academic publications by and about him from the previous decade or so -- enough to make the case for an article, anyway. Most of it is strictly specialist work. Nobody but Burkeologists gives a damn about the status of the Symbolic of Motives. But it was great to be able to write about this material in a way that made it more broadly known.

And then, of course, stuff was grafted onto my manuscript to make it sound like KB is the Hot New Shit -- the thing all the trendy academics are into now. (The editorial desire to proclaim something as the Hot New Shit is very basic, not unlike the impulse to screw with another's copy.) I fought to remove as much of that as possible. One of several points at which comparisons to Sisyphus become reasonable.

The throw-away line about KB accidentally inventing cultural studies has probably given birth to a dissertation by now.