casparb's review against another edition
4.0
Some of these essays are difficult, but I think all are valuable.
It's not a casual recommendation, unless one has a particular interest in the interplay between the philosophy of literary modernism and contemporary radical thinkers. But I took a lot from it! Gradually.
Jameson's afterword should not be missed either - a beautiful and succinct tying together of themes that crucially looks to the future of the modernism/realism dichotomy.
It's not a casual recommendation, unless one has a particular interest in the interplay between the philosophy of literary modernism and contemporary radical thinkers. But I took a lot from it! Gradually.
Jameson's afterword should not be missed either - a beautiful and succinct tying together of themes that crucially looks to the future of the modernism/realism dichotomy.
dsbookie's review against another edition
3.0
I, again, had to read this for my critical theory class, but this was much less accessible than the other Adorno text we read. Since this is full of other authors, they have very different writing styles that are difficult to understand. They are also basing their arguments on writings that I am not familiar with.
wrengaia's review against another edition
5.0
This is a really wonderful collection, and a fantastic introduction to the Frankfurt school. It sees prominent figures debate over specificities, though the intellectual conflicts circulate around the issue of realism vs. modernism. Thoroughly interesting and enjoyable.
elliot_burr's review against another edition
5.0
Almost certainly my favourite book on communism I've yet read. A clash of the titans.
Lukács impresses early on by making the strongest possible case for the losing position of socialist realism, beating the shit out of poor Bloch in the process. Jesterly Brecht makes an early appearance in the footnotes to Lukács' essay, a couple of drive-by nose-tweaks that set the stage for a subsequent long-form takedown that foregrounds the need for the freedom of artists to experiment and play -- unsurprising coming from the only actual artist represented among the writers this book collects.
The following portions of the book that concern Benjamin are the low-point here. It's not Benjamin's fault; the decision to represent his thought through diary entries and letters simply puts him at a disadvantage compared to the more rigorous showings of his peers, who actually wrote these essays for publication. Theodor Adorno/'Teddie Weisengrund' (lol)'s letters critiquing various works by Benjamin are relatively uninteresting for similar reasons.
Unlike Benjamin, though, Adorno gets the chance to redeem himself in the book's final section, two full essays wherein he absolutely lays down the law. In the first he gives Lukács a right proper seeing-to, totally demolishing his arguments for socialist realism in with full confidence and rigor. Standout diss:
"Lukács quotes approvingly from my work on the ageing of modern music [...] I do not bregrudge him this; 'Only those thoughts are true which fail to understand themselves' [a self-quote!], and no author can lay claim to proprietary rights over them. Nevertheless, it will need a better argument than Lukács to take these rights away from me."
Beside this passage I annotated, in block caps, one word: BOSS.
On Lukács, subordinate as he was to soviet ideology, Adorno concludes: "here is a man who is desperately tugging at his chains, imagining all the while that their clanking heralds the onward march of the world-spirit. He remains dazzled by the power that would never take his insubordinate ideas to heart, even if it tolerated them."
Less obviously antipathic, and therefore slightly less magisterial (though still strong), is the critique of Brecht and Sartre in Adorno's next and final essay, where he finally advances the claim that, in the postwar era of consumer capitalism, where even political art is appropriated and commodified by the culture industry, the only truly radical work is that which, explicitly political or not, makes itself formally intolerable to that industry's tastes and trends. Samuel Beckett is treated as an ideal model.
I get this reasoning, and sympathise, but find it ultimately unsatisfactory -- as does Fredric Jameson, whose outro efficiently lays out the strengths and weaknesses of all these thinkers and opens the door for a redemption of Lukács, whose ideal of artistic realism was improper for its time but may have new relevance today, in a time when high literature is in love with pastiche and the techniques of modernism are hegemonic in the culture industry -- in the irony of advertising, the quick-cut montage of film.
Of course, Jameson's "today" is today's yesterday, and this book hasn't answered my questions about the aesthetics proper to the capitalist world of 2020. But it's a hell of a primer and an essential point of departure. Loved it.
Lukács impresses early on by making the strongest possible case for the losing position of socialist realism, beating the shit out of poor Bloch in the process. Jesterly Brecht makes an early appearance in the footnotes to Lukács' essay, a couple of drive-by nose-tweaks that set the stage for a subsequent long-form takedown that foregrounds the need for the freedom of artists to experiment and play -- unsurprising coming from the only actual artist represented among the writers this book collects.
The following portions of the book that concern Benjamin are the low-point here. It's not Benjamin's fault; the decision to represent his thought through diary entries and letters simply puts him at a disadvantage compared to the more rigorous showings of his peers, who actually wrote these essays for publication. Theodor Adorno/'Teddie Weisengrund' (lol)'s letters critiquing various works by Benjamin are relatively uninteresting for similar reasons.
Unlike Benjamin, though, Adorno gets the chance to redeem himself in the book's final section, two full essays wherein he absolutely lays down the law. In the first he gives Lukács a right proper seeing-to, totally demolishing his arguments for socialist realism in with full confidence and rigor. Standout diss:
"Lukács quotes approvingly from my work on the ageing of modern music [...] I do not bregrudge him this; 'Only those thoughts are true which fail to understand themselves' [a self-quote!], and no author can lay claim to proprietary rights over them. Nevertheless, it will need a better argument than Lukács to take these rights away from me."
Beside this passage I annotated, in block caps, one word: BOSS.
On Lukács, subordinate as he was to soviet ideology, Adorno concludes: "here is a man who is desperately tugging at his chains, imagining all the while that their clanking heralds the onward march of the world-spirit. He remains dazzled by the power that would never take his insubordinate ideas to heart, even if it tolerated them."
Less obviously antipathic, and therefore slightly less magisterial (though still strong), is the critique of Brecht and Sartre in Adorno's next and final essay, where he finally advances the claim that, in the postwar era of consumer capitalism, where even political art is appropriated and commodified by the culture industry, the only truly radical work is that which, explicitly political or not, makes itself formally intolerable to that industry's tastes and trends. Samuel Beckett is treated as an ideal model.
I get this reasoning, and sympathise, but find it ultimately unsatisfactory -- as does Fredric Jameson, whose outro efficiently lays out the strengths and weaknesses of all these thinkers and opens the door for a redemption of Lukács, whose ideal of artistic realism was improper for its time but may have new relevance today, in a time when high literature is in love with pastiche and the techniques of modernism are hegemonic in the culture industry -- in the irony of advertising, the quick-cut montage of film.
Of course, Jameson's "today" is today's yesterday, and this book hasn't answered my questions about the aesthetics proper to the capitalist world of 2020. But it's a hell of a primer and an essential point of departure. Loved it.
franfernandezarce's review against another edition
3.0
here's a compilation of each "battle":
round one: ernst bloch vs georg lukács
winner: lukács by sheer sassiness
round two: bertolt brecht vs walter benjamin
brecht worries about trashing lúkacs while benjamin talks about how much brecht likes to talk about himself--so we'll call this a tie
round three: theodor adorno vs walter benjamin
both very polite while mentioning things they don't agree with. the round would have gone to adorno for suggesting calling benjamin's essay "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" but this one has to go to benjamin for calling adorno "teddy"
round four: theodor adorno vs theodor adorno
adorno replying to the void, aren't we the real winners here?
round one: ernst bloch vs georg lukács
winner: lukács by sheer sassiness
round two: bertolt brecht vs walter benjamin
brecht worries about trashing lúkacs while benjamin talks about how much brecht likes to talk about himself--so we'll call this a tie
round three: theodor adorno vs walter benjamin
both very polite while mentioning things they don't agree with. the round would have gone to adorno for suggesting calling benjamin's essay "the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction" but this one has to go to benjamin for calling adorno "teddy"
round four: theodor adorno vs theodor adorno
adorno replying to the void, aren't we the real winners here?
lettersinthemargins's review
challenging
informative
lighthearted
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
For readers pondering the questions of aesthetics and its politics.
These are a set of writings placed around the time when Fascism was on the rise in Germany.
These are a set of writings placed around the time when Fascism was on the rise in Germany.
wolfiedude14's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
A collection of essays, correspondence, letters, convening on the subject of Expressionism following the 30s in Germany.
It is clear to me that my knowledge of this general movement is insufficient to a point where I can't pass judgement on any individual writer's argument in a really determinate manner but I certainly get impressions.
Lukacs here comes across as the weakest of all of them in his arguments, there's a certain level of conceptual analysis I can appreciate but as Bloch rightly points out in the first essay that responds to Lukacs' essay (which generally started this whole thing it would seem) an analysis of Expressionism without reference to any of its key writers is very odd indeed. He also comes across theoretically weak apart from rather broadly non-aesthetic concepts such as reification and so forth. I just don't feel his arguments bear any weight, I'm not convinced expressionism reproduces bourgeois reality and systems nor fascistic in nature. That said on a reread I could change my view.
The back-end essay by Adorno which starts to rope in so many forms of media it's astounding is very good and worth the book I would say. It is a response to Sartre, Brecht, and others and is probably the most direct and engaging of the texts.
In terms of a collection it's pretty good volume. If anything there is a good sense of the history of the period, as well as the brilliant concluding section by Jameson who manages to tie it all together (and slightly redeems Lukacs in my view.)
It is clear to me that my knowledge of this general movement is insufficient to a point where I can't pass judgement on any individual writer's argument in a really determinate manner but I certainly get impressions.
Lukacs here comes across as the weakest of all of them in his arguments, there's a certain level of conceptual analysis I can appreciate but as Bloch rightly points out in the first essay that responds to Lukacs' essay (which generally started this whole thing it would seem) an analysis of Expressionism without reference to any of its key writers is very odd indeed. He also comes across theoretically weak apart from rather broadly non-aesthetic concepts such as reification and so forth. I just don't feel his arguments bear any weight, I'm not convinced expressionism reproduces bourgeois reality and systems nor fascistic in nature. That said on a reread I could change my view.
The back-end essay by Adorno which starts to rope in so many forms of media it's astounding is very good and worth the book I would say. It is a response to Sartre, Brecht, and others and is probably the most direct and engaging of the texts.
In terms of a collection it's pretty good volume. If anything there is a good sense of the history of the period, as well as the brilliant concluding section by Jameson who manages to tie it all together (and slightly redeems Lukacs in my view.)
matthew4's review against another edition
3.0
Sure it would be interesting to those with more prior knowledge than myself, however I found it slightly difficult to get through. Nonetheless interesting to see into the interactions between these figures.
jesslynsukamto's review against another edition
4.0
An outstanding collection of dialogic essays gathered from the key years of imperial and aesthetic crisis surrounding the rise of Fascism and leading up to WWII. Lots of notable thoughts, interesting as to how Adorno ties the notable literary works of Kafka, Beckett, Mann, Sartre, et al onto his theory of aesthetics and that he, and other authors on this collection of essays believe that we must seek desperately to renew the aesthetic of novelty today by ever more rapid rotations of its own axis, and to hold on the aporia that contains the crux of a history beyond which we have not yet passed, and also, to perpetually reinvent one. This is an absolutely vital collection for anyone interested in the history of political aesthetics in the 20th century.
jesswalsh's review against another edition
3.0
The translations are good, although at times they suffer from grammar so clunky that you can feel the original German trying to claw its way onto the page.
The real fundamental issue with this book is: what is the point of it? On paper, the concept of positing critique/reply style mini essays on Marxist Aesthetic theory against each other seems positive in that it could stimulate dialectic analysis and position theory within a historical framework. In reality, though, it quickly devolves into personal opinion and hang ups veiled in academic language. For example, Lukács can seemingly only conceptualise art as novels, and throughout the only time a piece of non-literature art is mentioned is a brief reference to Picasso’s Guernica. Actual consideration of art and aesthetic takes a back seat to arch comments about the rigorousness of another critic’s theoretical approach. There is not a speck of praxis to be had and the thinkers represented in the book come off, at best, as catty, aloof, and superficial. The choice, for example, to include the correspondence from Adorno to Benjamin wherein in the midst of general quibbling he remarks ‘The laughter of the audience at a cinema... is anything but good and revolutionary; instead, it is full of the worst bourgeois sadism’ in a letter dated 18th March 1936 - 11 days after German forces re-militarised the Rhineland and violated the treaty of Versailles - smacks of ‘complaining about the colour of the curtains while the house burns down’.
There certainly is an important place in Marxist theory for aesthetics. The field itself is of great worth. Given the material conditions at the time - the successes and failures of the ‘popular front’ movements and the USSR, the respective positions of the contributors within governments or parties - it is not surprising that the form that aesthetic analysis takes here seems to be animated by reactionary and personal ideas. This is not to say that the essays and correspondence do not have worth, though perhaps a harsher editor could have presented the material in a more critical way and given the overall theoretical field a better sheen. The concluding afterword by Jameson does go some way towards this and is a redeeming feature. It is measured, realistic in analysis and both sympathetic towards the problems faced by the thinkers presented in this book and critical of their vindictive and narrow-minded approaches.
The real fundamental issue with this book is: what is the point of it? On paper, the concept of positing critique/reply style mini essays on Marxist Aesthetic theory against each other seems positive in that it could stimulate dialectic analysis and position theory within a historical framework. In reality, though, it quickly devolves into personal opinion and hang ups veiled in academic language. For example, Lukács can seemingly only conceptualise art as novels, and throughout the only time a piece of non-literature art is mentioned is a brief reference to Picasso’s Guernica. Actual consideration of art and aesthetic takes a back seat to arch comments about the rigorousness of another critic’s theoretical approach. There is not a speck of praxis to be had and the thinkers represented in the book come off, at best, as catty, aloof, and superficial. The choice, for example, to include the correspondence from Adorno to Benjamin wherein in the midst of general quibbling he remarks ‘The laughter of the audience at a cinema... is anything but good and revolutionary; instead, it is full of the worst bourgeois sadism’ in a letter dated 18th March 1936 - 11 days after German forces re-militarised the Rhineland and violated the treaty of Versailles - smacks of ‘complaining about the colour of the curtains while the house burns down’.
There certainly is an important place in Marxist theory for aesthetics. The field itself is of great worth. Given the material conditions at the time - the successes and failures of the ‘popular front’ movements and the USSR, the respective positions of the contributors within governments or parties - it is not surprising that the form that aesthetic analysis takes here seems to be animated by reactionary and personal ideas. This is not to say that the essays and correspondence do not have worth, though perhaps a harsher editor could have presented the material in a more critical way and given the overall theoretical field a better sheen. The concluding afterword by Jameson does go some way towards this and is a redeeming feature. It is measured, realistic in analysis and both sympathetic towards the problems faced by the thinkers presented in this book and critical of their vindictive and narrow-minded approaches.