“Crimes of Art + Terror”… “Magister Ludi” Frank Lentricchia’s last “Glass Bead Game”? … Here’s Hope’n
“Crimes of Art + Terror”… “Magister Ludi” Frank Lentricchia’s last “Glass Bead Game”? … Here’s Hope’n
(March 15, 2014)
“The Magister Ludi gradually came to doubt that the intellectually gifted have a right to withdraw from life's big problems. Knecht comes to see Castalia as a kind of Ivory Tower, an ethereal and protected community, devoted to pure intellectual pursuits but oblivious to the problems posed by life outside its borders. This conclusion precipitates a personal crisis, and, according to his personal views regarding spiritual awakening [he left Castalia and gave up the Game]” (Hesse: “Magister Ludi – The Glass Bead Game”) …… One wonders if Frank Lentricchia, after rising to the such prominence in the Castalia-esque university, like Knecht, came to the realization that all those literary criticism publications (“the books on his mother's television set that no one in his family could read” – Johnny Critelli) were nothing more than eloquent “Glass Bead Games” devoid of “life outside the borders” of academia. And like Knecht, he was overcome with a need to engage “reality” – the reality of southern-Italian Americana. Turning from literary criticism, he began, in his words, “a second career – fiction” i.e. southern-Italian American fiction: “My fiction is inhabited in my first 3 novels by Italian-American voices.” And, he continues to write reality-based southern-Italian American literary quality fiction; i.e. fiction that conveys the reality of southern-Italian American culture in style that rises to the level of literature as opposed to melodramatic ‘dime-novels’.
Preface
If there are no teachers –
Who will pass on the history and culture of southern-Italian Americana?
It is a well-know fact that the third generation of southern-Italian Americans (i.e. the grandchildren of the pre-1920 immigrants) lost the Italian Language and lost much of the southern-Italian culture when they moved to the heterogeneous suburbs and adopted the American mass media created and cultivated culture.
For the masses of southern-Italian Americans who either have little or no college education, or have college degrees in the vocations largely devoid of the humanities (e.g. teachers, nurses, accountants, lawyers, doctors, etc.), it is understandable that they would be so susceptible to the mass media culture at the expense of their own heritage.
However, the real tragedy of the southern-Italian American culture is the relatively few southern-Italians who do get advanced degrees in the humanities also left their heritage behind.
For example:
There are approximately 124,000 Americans of southern-Italian descent holding PhD or EdD degrees (approximately 1% of the southern-Italian American population over the age of 25 – see Census data and computations at end of this article).
While exact numbers of PhD’s in respective disciplines are not available, by Einstein’s method of “mental experiment”, one can grasp a sense of probable proportions.
If one subtracts the EdD’s from the 124,000, and then subtracts the number of math and science PhD, we are probably left with precious few southern-Italian Americans with PhDs in the humanities.
Now subtracting southern-Italian American humanities PhDs in non-Italian specialties (e.g. American literature, English history, etc.). Now subtract the number of PhDs in Italian language and Italian (northern Italian) Studies.
Bottom line:
We come down to the 190 scholars of the Italian American Studies Association of which 99 (52%) identify themselves as being associated with a college (based on 2013 IASA on-line membership list).
99 scholars in the American university system dedicated to the study of the history and culture of near 17 million Americans of southern-Italian descent!
ARE YOU KIDDING ME !?! … Forget-about-it!
(see Related Art. # 3 for more on I/A education)
(see Related Art. # 3 for more on I/A education)
Can there be a culture without history – without history teachers?
Sadly some very prominent southern-Italian American PhD scholars (grandchildren of pre-1920 immigrants) chose not to study, teach and thereby pass on the history of ‘their people’. For example: Camille Paglia, Michael Parenti, Eugene Genovese and until recently Frank Lentricchia.
Interesting these scholars have not integrated well into the American University System; indeed, Yale PhD, much published and sought after speaker Parenti says: “I have been kick out of some of the best universities in the country".
Renown Yale PhD cultural historian Paglia settled into a small liberal arts college; Eugene Genovese, Colombia PhD and seminal American anti-bellum scholar, left a Yale teaching position for a small university in Rochester NY, and scuttlebutt has it that he had conflicts there.
So too Lentricchia; who, while ostensibly well integrated in the university system nevertheless, in his words:
“I didn’t feel comfortable among academics – still don’t – and didn’t want to look like one.
“ My writing on literary theory was all about taking down what was fashionable at elite institutions – if it was fashionable it couldn’t be right. And that got me the nickname in the Village Voice of the Dirty Harry of literary criticism – this lone gun approach. (see: “Frank Lentricchia…” ed. DePietro e-Book L 1418)
Is there an inherent cultural aversion between southern-Italian Americans and academia?
So few scholars and fewer still integrated into the system (see: Related Art. #2 for discussion).
Frank Lentricchia quits The Game and Returns to his southern-Italian Roots
The “Magister Ludi’s” Epiphany
Lentricchia received his Ph.D. from Duke in 1966, taught at UCLA, UC Irvine and Rice. Became the Katherine Everett Gilbert Professor of Literature and Theater Studies at Duke, has voluminous publications (books, journal articles, etc.), and the ultimate of academic status; having books reviewed in the “Village Voice” and the “New York Times.”
Up through the early 1990s he was the very definition of a successful academician. Then he experienced an epiphany – “Struck down on the road to Damascus” – as it were.
Like Magister Ludi Knecht who:
“came to see Castalia as a kind of Ivory Tower, an ethereal and protected community, devoted to pure intellectual pursuits but oblivious to the problems posed by life outside its borders. This conclusion precipitates a personal crisis…”
Similarly Lentricchia reports:
In the late 80s, I had a growing sense that academic literary criticism was no longer interested in the art of literature … I was disenchanted with the academy … Morally self-righteous literary academics are, many of them, at heart, book burners. Serious literature is their nightmare because it won’t support simplistic moralism or programs for social change.
In April of ’91, I made a trip to a trappist monastery (Mepkin Abbey) in South Carolina, where I spent 4 days living the life – praying the hours around the clock, rarely talking.
“…Monks were the best examples of the sort of pure devotion that ought to define the life of a writer. I was enthralled.
“When I left, I was asked by one of the monks to “write about us” because “you’re a writer.” I’d never considered myself a writer in that sense, but felt that this man couldn’t be refused.
“So I wrote a piece about my experience at Mepkin Abbey which Harper’s took and I was off. The exhilaration of excavating my own inner world rather than someone else’s was indescribable. (De Pietro L 1437)
“and I was off..” Indeed …how’s that for understatement
1994: “The Edge of Night”
An autobiography that Kit Wallingford says:
Lentricchia “wants to claim and celebrate his Italian-American working-class background.
1996: “The Knifeman” and also “Johnny Critelli”
1999: “The Music of the Inferno”
2001: “Lucchesi and The Whale”
2002: “Sitdown at the Heartland Hotel”
2003: Oh! Oh! … The lure of the Game (maybe his wife and co-Gamer) pulls him back in; he publishes with Jody McAuliffe “Crimes of Art + Terror”, a quintessential work of literary criticism Glass Bead Gaming.
2010: He comes back to his senses, publishing “The Italian Actress”
2011: “The Sadness of Antonioni”
2013: “The Accidental Pallbearer: An Eliot Conte Mystery”
2014: “The Dog Killer of Utica: An Eliot Conte Mystery”
Whether playing the Glass Bead Game or writing fiction, Frank Lenticchia, like his boyhood idol Mickey Mantle, is a “long-ball hitter”.
Conclusion
Near 17 million Americans of southern-Italian descent have virtually no literati preserving, perpetuating and teaching their near 3,000 year social history. What few PhD scholars that come from their ranks are largely draw off into other cultural disciplines.
Frank Lentricchia is an absolutely brilliant and creative scholar who spent most of his intelligence and creativity producing aesthetic works that had nothing to do with the southern-Italian American culture from which he came.
“Praise be…” he, to my mind, came to his senses, returning to his roots (his people) and is applying his genius and creativity to southern-Italian American culture.
My Man … My Man
What a Shame!
All those Years Playing
The Glass Bead Game
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For those interested in the specifics of the Glass Bead Game devoid of REALITY, and examples take from “Crimes of Art + Terror” demonstrating how Lentricchia played the Game, the following.
(note: I don’t mean to slight co-Magister Ludi Jody McAuliffe. However, the focus of this ‘note’ is Lentricchia.)
The Glass Bead Game
"…is the quintessence of intellectuality and art, the sublime cult, the unio mystica of all separate members of the Universitas Litterarum.
… it has partially taken over the role of art, partially that of speculative philosophy.
The Game [similar to] music … One theme, two themes, or three themes were stated, elaborated, varied, and underwent a development quite similar to that of the theme in a Bach fugue or a concerto movement.
A Game, for example, might start from a given astronomical configuration, or from the actual theme of a Bach fugue, or from a sentence out of Leibniz or the Upanishads, and from this theme, depending on the intentions and talents of the player, it could either further explore and elaborate the initial motif or else enrich its expressiveness by allusions to kindred concepts.
Beginners learned how to establish parallels, by means of the Game's symbols, between a piece of classical music and the formula for some law of nature. Experts and Masters of the Game freely wove the initial theme into unlimited combinations
“…the supreme head of the Game, bearing the title of Ludi Magister (Hesse, “The Glass Bead Game”).
“The Game” – “art, philosophy and music.”
Significant in the above description of “The Game”: there is no mention of science or history – ‘reality’! Comparisons are draw from the aesthetic disciplines: art, philosophy and music.
In short, game players do NOT posit empirical propositions about the material world e.g. society. Excellence is NOT judged by the truth and falsity of propositions tested against the reality they purport to describe and explain. All of that kind of ‘stuff’ is the ‘stuff’ of empirical sciences.
“Terrorism” for example is not described and explained by careful data collection, hypothesis formation, verifying the hypothesis, etc.
“Terrorism” for the “Glass Bead” player is “motif expressiveness by allusions to kindred concepts.”
Again, it cannot be emphasized enough: the essence of the Game is to connect “motifs”, “themes” and “kindred concepts”– NOT physical relationships of physical realities!
“The Glass Bead Game” – “Crimes of Art + Terror”
“Crimes of Art + Terror” is a good example of how contemporary Magister Ludi play the Glass Bead Game. The key concept to keep in mind when studying a game is how well the player “establishes parallels” and “combinations” between “themes”, “motifs” and "concepts".
The ability to combine very different “motifs’ for which there are no obvious connections is the goal and the hallmark of a Magister Ludi.
The greater the perceived differences between motifs unified – the greater the game; the greater the player.
The title of this Game (“Crimes of Art + Terror”) immediately indicates the motifs to be connected “Crime”, “Art” and “Terror”. Normally, one would not ‘see’ a similarity between the crime of say a murderer, and a work of art, and a terrorist. But, normal people are not Magister Ludi.
To see how it is done, first:
Consider the Table of Context of the Glass Bead Game – “Crimes of Art +Terror”
Note:
The Game requires that each chapter demonstrate the connection between the three motifs: ‘Crime’, ‘Art’ and ‘Terror’.
Further:
All the diverse sub-chapters must become unified in the common chapter theme. This is to say, each chapter is in itself a “Glass Bead Game”. For example, the sub-chapter Wordsworth must be unified with the chapter motif Literary Terrorists; which, in turn must be unified with the book (Game) title motifs ‘Crime’, ‘Art’ and ‘Terror’.
In short:
All the very different sub-chapter motifs must become unified in the grand Game Motif – ‘Crime’ ‘Art’ and ‘Terror’
Read, indeed savor, the chapter and subchapter headings (motifs) listed below. Ask yourself if ‘obvious’ connections come to mind. The lack of obvious connections conjures an appreciation for the Glass Bead player’s skill in finding a unifying theme.
For example, is it obvious that “Groundzeroland” (Saudi Arabian terrorist) is related to the early 19th century English poet Wordsworth and related to the contemporary Italian American movie director Scorsese, and related to the 20th century French literary artist Genet, and related to the 19th century African American civil rights leader Frederich Douglass…etc.
Table of Context
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
1. GROUNDZEROLAND
2. LITERARY TERRORISTS
William Wordsworth
The Unabomber
Don DeLillo
3. SOLITARY SAVAGES
Jack Henry Abbott/Norman Mailer
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Martin Scorsese
Bret Easton Ellis
4. CROSSING THE LINE
Joseph Conrad
John Cassavetes
Thomas Mann
Francis Ford Coppola
5. ROUGH TRADE
Jean Genet
Frederick Douglass
6. DELIBERATE ORPHANS
Herman Melville
J. M. Synge
Thomas Bernhard
7. THE LAST MANIACAL FOLLY OF HEINRICH VON KLEIST (A FICTION)
The ability to establish inter-connections between all the very diverse names in this table-of-context to one another, and in turn connect all names to the ‘Crime’, ‘Art’ and “Terror’ theme, is clearly the hallmark of a Magister Ludi such a Lentricchia.
The interested reader should just dwell on the list and marvel at the creativity required by the Magister Ludi to find connection between the profoundly diverse individuals who lived and worked apart from each other across vast expanses of time and space.
I doubt that any empirical historian or social scientist would remotely find factual connects within this crowd. But, again, and it cannot be said enough times: Magister Ludi are NOT empiricist – objective verifiable reality is not the object of their enquiries! They are aestheticists!
Significantly the ‘Crime’, ‘Art’ and ‘Terror’ Game ends with “A Fiction”, which pretty much sums of this Game and Glass Bead Games generally; i.e. fiction.
Again, the Glass Bead Game is NOT about factual reality, it’s an aesthetic quest for interweaving diverse aesthetic motifs, as a musical composer would do in creating a symphony.
A Glass Bead player has more in common with Beethoven than Edward Gibbon.
Probing Deeper into the Game – Literary Anecdotes and History
While reflecting on the diversity of the people listed in the Glass Bead Game’s table-of-context gives one a ‘sense’ of the aesthetic, as opposed to the empirical, nature of the Game; to fully appreciate the Game it is necessary to go deeper into the actual text and follow the chain of subjective value judgments (NOT to be confused with a chain of valid logical arguments).
For example, consider The Game’s introductory comments of Magister Ludi Lentricchia.
The book (Game) begins with two literary anecdotes:
First, the W.B. Yeats’ “mediation of the Easter Insurrection of 1916” (i.e. Irish revolt against English rule). Specifically Lentricchia writes:
“Yeats broods on the recasting of the educated of privileged class provenance into violent actors …[he] is enthralled with the transformation of the respectable and the polite and the boring into insurgents – a change very like that undergone by the suicide hijackers of September 11. (L 22 emp. +)
Lentricchia’s opening move in The Game is masterful. Just what one would expect from a Magister Ludi.
Note: the use of the word “insurgent” to denote the Irish is a very important ‘play’ in this ‘game’ and the mark of a master player.
With one word "insurgent" Lentricchia has created an identity between two ostensively very different groups of people: 1916 Irish Catholics and 2001 Saudi Arabian Muslims.
He has not quoted Yeats. He is interpreting Yeats to fit his Game
He has not quoted Yeats. He is interpreting Yeats to fit his Game
He characterizes the Irish as insurgents. In the strict denotative meaning of the word, that is accurate. However, the contemporary connotative meaning of the word has come to be associated with Muslims generally called Terrorists. For example, Google the phase ‘insurgents killed’: Most of the stories are about Iraq and Afghanistan and other Muslims attacking pro-Western democratic governments. The words 'insurgent' or 'terrorist' have not be applied to the pro-westerner Christians who have 'violently' overthown the government of Ukraine.
The word ‘insurgent’ would not be applied to the Minutemen at Lexington or other Americans fighting the British. Rather, we call such men ‘revolutionaries’. It has a positive connotation vs. the negative connotation of the word ‘insurgent’.
The question then is: should the Irish fighting the British be called insurgents and thereby linguistically identified with the Muslim radicals in Afghanistan, etc. or are they more accurately characterized as revolutionaries fighting against British oppression as did the Minutemen?
For purposes of the Game, the use of the word “insurgent” makes the comparison between the Irish and the hijackers prima facie plausible even if it is historically inaccurate.
Again, all of this is strictly a linguist GAME – NOT historical.
Historically, there is no identity between the Irish revolutionaries and the Saudi hijackers beyond the act of violence!
Consider actual History verses linguistic Games:
Irish Catholics revolting against centuries of Protestant British Colonial occupation and brutal exploitations that cause massive emigration and incomprehensible suffering and numbers of death are identified with Saudi Arabian suicide bombers.
Clearly, the typical student of social history would find that connection – to be polite, ‘tenuous’.
Given the paucity of information about the 911 hijackers, it is hard to find the similarities with the Irish revolutionaries. Given the history of Irish incomprehensible suffering and Saudi Arabia incomprehensible wealth, it’s even harder to find similarities. Moreover, what little is known, clearly suggest that there are no similarities beyond the broad generic category ‘violence’.
The Irish were manifestations of a national uprising with the objective, in Lentricchia’s words, “to throw off colonial oppression” – centuries long history of brutal oppression, starvation, exploitation and ultimately massive emigration. Further, the Irish revolutionaries were NOT suicidal. They were soldiers (as in Irish Republican ARMY) who went into battle with the hope, and making every effort to, survive; even though they were willing to die if it came to that, they were not intent on dying.
There is literally no similar connection between the Saudi Arabian nationals either in terms of political history or suicides and Irish Revolutionaries. Lentricchia, frankly, makes an arbitrary and capricious LINGUIATIC connection between two different species of the genius violence in order to support his thesis.
Which, of course, is the essence of the Game. He is not an historian seeking objective knowledge of the past. He is a Glass Bead Game player seeking relationships between motifs and themes.
Lentricchia’s second anecdotal connection, in the Game's lead-off, between crime, art and violence, comes from linking four contemporary non-political crimes with, of all thiinngs the Romantic Movement:
1) Gordon Lish’s “Dear Mr. Capote”
2) Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood”
3) Norman Mailer’s “The Executioner’s Song”
4) Mailer’s own act of violence (knifing his wife); all having to do with criminal non-political violence.
Lentricchia sees in these crimes of violence and books about them as:
“The incestuous relationship between killers and writers is perfectly crystallized.
Further this “incestuous relationship” is an unbroken 200-year continuum going back to the early nineteenth century Romantic Movement. He writes:
“The disturbing adjacency of literary creativity with violence and even political terror is an inheritance of a romantic extremity whose force is still felt.
Romanticism In The Context of the Game
Again, as he arbitrarily characterized 1916 Irish revolutionaries as “insurgents” in order to connect them to 2001 Saudi “hijackers”, Magister Ludi Lentricchia arbitrarily stipulates the nature of “romantic literary visions” to suit the needs of his Game.
He writes:
“The desire beneath many romantic literary visions is for a terrifying awakening that would undo the West's economic and cultural order, whose origin was the Industrial Revolution and whose goal is global saturation, the obliteration of difference. L37-38).
That interpretation of “romantic visions” stands in stark contradiction to many authoritative definitions and characterizations of romanticism.
For example:
“Romanticism: A movement of the eighteenth and ninetieth centuries which marked the reaction in literature, philosophy, art, religion, and politics from the neo-classicism and form a orthodoxy of the preceding period” (“A Handbook of Literature”, Thrall et al. p. 429)
Does that sound like something “terrifying” or a movement bent upon “undoing and economic and cultural order”?
Again:
“Walter Pater thought the addition of strangeness to beauty constituted the romantic temper.
“American transcendentalist Dr. F. H. Hedge thought the essence of romanticism was aspirating, having its origin in wonder and mystery.
“An interesting schematic explanation calls romanticism the predominance of imagination over reason and formal rules and over the sense of fact or the actual. (Ibid)
Clearly, there are many different definitions or notions about Romanticism that lack any sense of the Terrifying.
In sum:
“Romanticism is a term used in many senses, a favorite recent one being that which sees in the romantic mood a psychological desire to escape from unpleasant realities. (Ibid)
Again, nothing “terrifying” here!
So what’s up with the Lentricchia’s definition of romantic literature?
Well Wordsworth is a Romantic poet. So if Wordsworth is going to be related to 911 Terrorist, than Romanticism must have something to do with terrorism – No?
Accordingly, unencumbered by objective facts of history or the consensus of literary historians, the Game player conjures a definition of romanticism that fits his thesis.
In sum, these anecdotes lead to the conclusion expressed with Lentricchia's rhetorical question:
“Do killers, artists, and terrorists need one another?” (L34-35 emp.+)
The whole of his book (Game) is to demonstrate his answer: YES they do!
In sum:
Of course, the above is not meant as a summary, critique or criticism of “Crimes of Art + Terror”. Rather to give some idea about the nature of the Glass Bead Game.
Most specifically, to give emphasize that the Game is NOT empirical or factual; it is NOT about truth or falsity any more than a Beethoven symphony would be evaluated in epistemological terms.
Further, it is necessary to understand the aesthetic non-empirical nature of the Game to gain some insight into Lentricchia’s quitting the Game and begin writing southern-Italian American fiction.
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Addendum
Italian American Education Attainment –
American Community Survey Census Data
DISCLAIMER: Posts published in i-Italy are intended to stimulate a debate in the Italian and Italian-American Community and sometimes deal with controversial issues. The Editors are not responsible for, nor necessarily in agreement with the views presented by individual contributors.
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