Howe, Fanny. Second Childhood. Graywolf Press 2014.
Review Written and Edited by Peter Buller
Childhood is the ultimate fantasy of adulthood. After experiencing the absurd tediousness of working-class life, the boundless simplicity and freedom of childhood becomes not just nostalgic, but materialistically enticing. Fantasizing for childhood extends beyond materialist desires, as well. "The Three Metamorphoses" of Nietzsche's Zarathustra imagines a child as the culmination of a human spirit's growth into extra-moral superhumans. There is something weightless and innocent to childhood that makes its perspective attractive--to poets, philosophers, and people in general. Since her intriguing reflections on bewilderment, faeries, and more (from The Wedding Dress), one could perceive Fanny Howe as one such poet attracted to childhood. Her short collection Second Childhood reinforces this without compromising her weave of imagination, multiculturalism, and determination to ask questions without answers.
Stifter, Adalbert. Rock Crystal (Trans. Elizabeth Mayer and Marianne Moore). New York Review of Books 2008.
Review Written and Edited by Peter Buller.
Ephemerality lies at the heart of all description. From skimmable sentences to carefully conceived images, description always forms a fleeting, linguistic conceptualization of the thing described. Character's outfits and background scenery is detailed, and before long the reader finds these things forgotten as the text's more intriguing insights unfold. Moreover, description always services a greater purpose. Even proponents of "show, don't tell" suggest a writing more dedicated to images--or sentiments, or concepts, etc.--behind and beyond descriptions, rather than the language of description itself. One would be remiss to read Hemingway for his descriptions of trees, after all. Description, it seems, fits in one of two critical frameworks: first, as one of the few remaining utilities of the objective approach to literature (which Robbe-Grillet's Jealousy cunningly criticizes); and second, as a functional but dull way to convey information to the reader in service of a deeper theme. Neither approach grants description much, if any, appeal; nor offers it any real defense. Criticisms of objective writing tend to argue against the authenticity of an approach riding on descriptions, while critics of the latter permit that other literary tools often serve writing better than bland description. Our critical consensus seems ready to do away with description altogether; though sometimes the exceptions to our critical perceptions slip through the cracks. Such is the case of Adalbert Stifter's Rock Crystal and its shimmering prose.
