Customer Reviews

The Stature of Man

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This book, also, known as "The Age of Defeat"addresses the decline of the hero in modern literature. Wilson tracesthe development of the hero from the romantic age to the 1950's (whenthe bookk was originally published) and attempts to relate the decline of the value of the hero in modern literature to the value that modern man places on itself and its efforts to acheieve greatness. Sartre's notions of freedom are discussed as well as Camus, Miller, Huxley, Dosteoevsky and T.S. Eliot in relation to the falling opinion of modern authors on the worth of human life and the effect that this has on the present age. As is usual with Wilson, he does an excellent job of posing the problem, but there is very little attempt to do anything about it. Nevertheless, the attempt is made and an analysis of the causes of the problem are made clear so that future artists will have a better point of departure than the self-pitying, defeatist literature of the 20th century.

One thing that surprised me about "The Stature of Man" is Wilson's admission that yes, Sartre's nausea is the ultimate reality of human existence--despite the peak experiences, flashes of visionary consciousness, and all the rest. Wilson is not always as intellectually and empirically honest as he is in this one. One thing that has always made me suspicious of Wilson, despite him being one of my favorite writers, is that he has never properly addressed the issue of mental illness. We can indeed, as he has said repeatedly in every book from "Religion and the Rebel" to "Poetry and Mysticism", galvanize our wills and actualize our talents, "become something" in the tradition of his heroes, Goethe, Shelley, Shaw, but if we have an objective mental disorder (and he has made it clear that he is not a subjectivist, that he does believe in an on objective reality despite his prittle prattle about the dream world of books and ideas can create), his philosophy can really do little for us. A schizophrenic isn't going to "peak" when he is having a delusional fit, no matter how hard he tries. In "Stature", towards the end, Wilson writes about a book (one of many) by Joyce Carol Oates as being a modern example of the kind of hero or character he is trying to create, ie an optimistic and strong one. And yet any sustained study of Oates work reveals a tragic perspective on both the world and the human condition, not an optimistic one. I believe Oates was one of the first writers to raise the question, "How can one bring a child into this world in good conscience?" That is definitely not a Wilsonian question. Literature as a whole does not point toward optimism, although I wouldn't say it points toward the pessimism of a Sartre, who Wilson (despite his adolescent adulation of him) seems to despise. His rants against Samuel Beckett get more and more infuriating with every book of Wilson's I read. Beckett may have been pessimistic, but whatever Wilson might say, he was a great artist and authentic in his convictions, whether he likes them or not. The play Endgame has more power and passion than anything Wilson has ever written--and Beckett has no need to drop names. Anyway, I would strongly recommend this book, if only to experience a different perspective from the norm now on literature.