Customer Reviews

A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life

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As a real fan of Arnold Weinstein's terrific lectures on both American and World Literature (from the Teaching Company, but which I borrow from my library), I had high expectations for this book. My expectations were exceeded. That's because in the lectures, Dr. Weinstein focuses almost exclusively on literature. That's not a bad thing. It's a solid traditional approach. But in this text he is also free to draw in art, theater and film where appropriate, and to treat his material thematically, instead of on a book by book basis, a practice which tends to marginalize overall thematic observations. Also, in this format Dr. Weinstein can engage in digressions, and not worry about taking up too much time doing so, as he might in a lecture situation.

Here's an example of a short digression that I found particularly insightful: "One of the ironies of modern culture is its peculiar treatment of high art. Either we subject it to the rigors of modern critical theory, so as to disclose the hidden ideological arrangements it contains; or we piously commit it to the scholar's care, with the implicit view that we "laypeople" do not have the tools of access to frequent such work with any degree of profit. It would be better if we taught our students to view all art as fair game, to approach the most formidable and hermetic works as an aspiring thief might; with intent to break and enter, to discover, steal and possess what is there." Page 334.

Summarizing his insights at the end of this highly engaging text, he meditates on the tragedy of modernity, which he sees as a surfeit of consciousness combined with a lack of human connection. Weinstein illustrates this observation most dramatically through Faulkner's Quentin Compson. First, he cites Robert Penn Warren as having gotten it right when he said that it is not that Quentin suffers from a consciousness of doom, but rather the doom of consciousness. Hamlet was perhaps the first hyperconscious modern, and Weinstein does a fine job of showing how Hamlet and Quentin are connected, too.

Implicit in this, at least in my opinion, is that hyperconsciousness has been promoted by the consumer society. It has filled the world with things, variations of things upon things, filling up our lives with endless vexed choices and in so doing both stokes and attempts to put out the fire of hyperconsciouness. In either case we are seduced into ignoring the fast beating heart of our own humanity as this world of things muffles the scream that goes through the house of our bodies and consciousness.

For a visceral thrill we can always count on Arnold--not Schwarzenegger in this case, but Arnold Weinstein, whose books combine a whole lot of learning with the human touch of passion and the starkness of memory. Arnold's dream of a scream loud enough to wake up an entire household clues us in immediately that he is a sensitive, caring man, with definite issues regarding boundaries. No wonder he then focusses on the famous Munch painting in which space and time are caught up and expressed in a soundless scream, a visceral pain of being that transcends the visual and becomes auditory, or not quite.

Many professors have written reams about Munch's SCREAM, but few have managed to bring it into the mainstream of Western intellectual culture. As he did in his book about spaces and the heimlich, Weinstein constantly surprises and envigorates the tiredest old subjects, I can just imagine what he does to his students!

Professor Weinstein is one of the great teachers of literature, and one of the great humanists as well. His new book offers a compelling approach to literature, one that is not common in the academy by trying to de-intellectualize the reading of literature by connecting it to living, not thinking, our lives. His interpretations of Edward Munch's art are particularly compelling and novel, while his readings of literary works such as Toni Morrison's BELOVED are original and make one want to run out and read the book immediately. This is a completely original and human book and I recommend it highly.

Weinstein's observations are like those moments you have in life where for an instant, a fog of clarity fills your heart and mind. He is that mist of understanding you cannot describe, and best of all he is accessible in portable paperback. I am currently a student of his and he gives a reader the tools of a new set of eyes that you put together by yourself as you learn. Why do we read things? Weinsteing will lead you to your own answer, and reading will never be the same. ...literature's LSD with no harmful side effects.

Weinstein reminds us why we read--to access alien subjectivities and begin to understand the world in which we live. This beautifully written book legitimizes the discipline of English and compels us to marinade in and reflect on the fascinating phenomenon of consciousness.

Professor Weinstein is one of the great teachers of literature, and one of the great humanists as well. His new book offers a compelling approach to literature, one that is not common in the academy by trying to de-intellectualize the reading of literature by connecting it to living, not thinking, our lives. His interpretations of Edward Munch's art are particularly compelling and novel, while his readings of literary works such as Toni Morrison's BELOVED are original and make one want to run out and read the book immediately. This is a completely original and human book and I recommend it highly.

An excellent book. Weinstein shows through example and explanation how literature can teach us about life. Even if you have never read the books he quotes from his examples are clear. I don't think you can read this book without wanting to read more of Arnold Weinstein's books and more of the classics in general. I am now reading Dr. Weinstein's book, "Recovering Your Story".

I could not put this book down. I talked about it to everyone I knew while I was reading and then bought copies for them! It was insightful and intuitive, a wonderful commentary on the ability of great literature to enrich our lives.

I could only get halfway through this book before I had to throw it across the room. Yes, Weinstein is passionate and truly loves art and literature. He's a clear, fluid writer, and I appreciate the fact that he's writing for a lay audience. I also appreciate his deep sympathy for the sick and infirm, as well as his intuitions about how pain and suffering affect our sense of humanity. I think this is an important and often overlooked aspect of both art and life.

But I became so frustrated! First, he repeats himself. The phrase, "a scream goes through the house" comes up every eight or nine pages. Okay! I get it! Also, Weinstein's ideas are often incomplete and his interpretations do not seem especially insightful to me. I feel bad saying that I think Weinstein misinterprets his own dream, the guiding dream of his life, presented on page 100. Maybe I should just say he doesn't interpret it fully or within a long-standing, pre-existent, useful framework--for it's a classic Jungian dream of the shadow, of a reflexive persecution of the unacceptable parts of oneself, and it's weird to watch Weinstein miss this. He misses Jung altogether, though I would think Jung might come in handy in a book about the deep social and physical connections that bind us to art (which is sometimes also called myth).

I think maybe Jung isn't big in academics (hard to say since I'm not an academic), but there's no good reason for this. He's a little wacky but no wackier than Freud, who Weinstein refers to often and also without particular insight. IMHO, what is so deeply brilliant about Freud is that he recognized that our bodies are what unites us as human and inspires the deepest structures of our psyche--which is why half of Freud's theories are named after body parts. Weinstein dances around this but, in my reading, I never see him get there.

But when I really had to just stop reading was when I got to the florid praise for Oliver Sacks. Really? I'm neutral on Sacks, but I know brilliant and Sacks aint it. Sacks's best work is based on the research and writing of V.S. Ramachandran, who is brilliant. By this point, I just felt that Weinstein had missed too much, too many references and ideas--he's a Harvard literature professor! I shouldn't get the feeling I've read more than he has. I haven't, believe me!

Arnold Weinstein is a brilliant teacher/scholar at Brown University who addresses some very interesting ideas in this book. He displays his very broad grasp of both literature and cinema in presenting this book's themes. Unfortunately, the ideas he raises are presented in a manner that strikes me as overly rambling and lacking in clear definition. I found it somewhat interesting but unsatisfying. I found his lectures much more enjoyable.