Afternoon Session and Discussion, August 4, 1953, the Forum Room (Part Two)

The first afternoon session discussion on August 4th continues from Part One. On this recording, W.M. Frohock’s lecture continues and the first session discussion begins. After this recording, the session dicussion continues on Part Three of the August 4th afternoon session.

Time	Annotation	Layer
0:01	The mind revolts. Reality buzzes and booms at him. The exterior world explodes at him, beats him up, shuts him up in a box. Experience shoots at him and throws spears. The hero's mind posits an objective, verifiable reality outside itself and assumes it to be where it should be.	W.M. Frohock
0:26	But the continuous shock makes him perceive it as if it were hallucination. The impact of so violent a world keeps him on the ragged line that separates fantasy from waking, from waking and stably conscious life. This is the effect that Celine aims at in Journey to the End of Night and Death on the Installment Plan without ever quite bringing it off.	W.M. Frohock
0:56	How Ralph Ellison brings it off demands the attention of the kind of critic we so badly need. Criticism of the kind I've been asking for may be slow in coming, but we must have it, and it's not inconceivable that we shall.	W.M. Frohock
3:57	Under moral, would you include aesthetic?	W.M. Frohock
4:01	Well, then I'm right with you all the way. I don't think that Mr. Trilling does. In fact, I can put my hand on the Bible and say that he doesn't because we have discussed it. I think, then, probably that we're tied up in the ambiguity of a word that we may have to throw overboard.	W.M. Frohock
6:29	Well, Mr. Lytle, part of our difference there may be regional. I'm probably too much of a swamp Yankee to want to appear as the enemy of the word moral. But on the other hand, for the purposes that we're working at, which is to find a label, I would have no-- I think probably a good old word that has been batted around as much as imagination has is as useful as any.	W.M. Frohock
7:01	If Mr. Hyman has a special reason for retaining the word moral, I'd rather he were the one to defend it. As for organization, the letter killeth I think by the word organization, we mean, really, simply ordering some activity of the mind, and we're pretty vague about the psychology of it.	W.M. Frohock
7:30	The French use the object very frequently to the word organization as a barbarism and instead say, put order in. SPEAKING IN FRENCH such and such a thing, which really suggests-- unless it suggests the straitjacket-- suggests some sort of process. And I think that's all we're at. Am I wrong?	W.M. Frohock
9:00	With that poem is an illustration, though. The poem goes on to point out that the wilderness also makes the jar somewhat-- this overly organized jar-- somewhat tawdry, so that I believe that the poem by Wallace Stevens doesn't answer this question. It's just in the middle of both sides of the discussion.	W.M. Frohock
9:17	INAUDIBLE	W.M. Frohock
11:48	Now, I find that awfully difficult to follow--	W.M. Frohock
12:07	Can I ask--	W.M. Frohock
12:14	How would you like to be in my place?	W.M. Frohock
12:20	First of all, I'm not the Irishman, and therefore, shouldn't be expected to be against everything. And I--	W.M. Frohock
12:38	And I'm a little bit alarmed to discover that I've been understood to reject at least two forms of critical activity, which I thought I was recommending but calling incomplete.	W.M. Frohock
12:55	And I'd like to correct myself, if I did seem to reject them, and insist that I was saying that each one by itself did an incomplete job and that because of their incompleteness they were more or less at liberty to walk around like those people in the inferno who are punished by having their heads twisted around in the other direction.	W.M. Frohock
13:26	That, I hoped, was my point. As for transformism, dear, I associate that with biology, somehow, and I'm a little bit lost. But the main point is that Baudelaire wasn't asking the artist to do it. Baudelaire was asking the critic to do it.	W.M. Frohock
13:49	The onus isn't on you, sir, except that, as you do so well once in a while, put on the wolf's clothing. You are under some obligation now and then.	W.M. Frohock
14:06	Baudelaire was talking about Tannhauser of all things. And the music delighted him, and he discovered that other people underwent or experienced, rather, a very similar delight. And nobody had tried to say why, and that carried him from what I would call an intuitive experience-- almost a shock on the nerves, if you like-- into some sort of mental activity.	W.M. Frohock
14:37	And he tries to figure out why it is that Tannhauser delights him, which seems to me one of the necessary operations of all criticism. In any case, although I recommend that attitude, I didn't invent it.	W.M. Frohock
18:14	The word was exclusively moral act-- explicitly moral. And I think the root of the question-- I see what's coming.	W.M. Frohock
19:33	--is involved with this one.	W.M. Frohock
19:36	That section of the novel was merely where the protagonist was taken to a hospital after his experience in the paint company. Is that the one you--	W.M. Frohock
19:44	Well no, I would also include the place where old Rass is up on the horse throwing spears wearing God knows what kind of costume. You must remember the place, Mr. Ellison.	W.M. Frohock
20:03	And not hallucinated?	W.M. Frohock
20:07	No, I wasn't.	W.M. Frohock
20:25	I am a victim of my own inability, I think, to attend to any one set of words. Or maybe you let me off there a little bit. One of us is tying me in knots. Anyway, would you put the main question again?	W.M. Frohock
21:06	Can I answer?	W.M. Frohock
21:08	No.	W.M. Frohock
21:11	I won't accept a the exclusive definition there of the moral of this job. There's motive there-- may be moral in Mr. Hyman's sense of the word or Mr. Trilling's sense of the word. Moral-- I don't see any reason in the world why it can't be purely aesthetic.	W.M. Frohock
21:35	Or I don't see why it has to be exclusively one or the other as in my most unfortunate metaphor-- and I wish to God I hadn't said anything-- about the pigsty and the slum. If I had just stopped with the pigsty, I'd have been well off.	W.M. Frohock
22:26	Well, I did mean that.	W.M. Frohock
24:50	Am I in the position now of having to defend the word moral whether I wanted or not?	W.M. Frohock
25:01	Well, how did I ever get there?	W.M. Frohock
25:06	I blamed it on somebody else. As a matter of fact, I told Stanley Edgar Hyman before this group met that I never wanted him to say again that he hadn't been stooged for.	W.M. Frohock
25:22	I have done everything but get down on the floor and squirm about that word moral. As for compassionate imagination, sympathetic imagination, I'm awfully worried if I get very far into that that I will end up-- I seem to be doing things that I don't mean to do here-- end up proclaiming that my favorite novelist is John Steinbeck because he has more compassion than brains.	W.M. Frohock
25:55	I don't want to do it.	W.M. Frohock
28:00	I recommend a good chapter in the liberal imagination on the subject, which is the transcript of a speech that he made originally at Kenyon College, I believe. I can't answer your question. I don't have that much insight into Mr. Trilling.	W.M. Frohock
28:18	But it sounds to me when I read him as though he wanted to restrict the meaning of the word novel to the kind of fiction which made its capital of manners, ways of living in groups, and so forth where those were rather strictly ruled by recognized conventions. Bad word. I can't imagine a convention that was unrecognized.	W.M. Frohock
29:03	I suspect so. I read Eliot's book I don't know how long ago and remember only my resentment of it at the time. But I suspect that there is a slight joining of minds in that direction. It's only a suspicion, and I could be easily refuted by anyone who has Eliot and INAUDIBLE at his fingertips.	W.M. Frohock
30:27	Well, once again, why do I sit down?	W.M. Frohock
30:31	Would anybody else like to talk? My point would be-- my point was-- that Sinclair Lewis does not, if I'm right, have the lowest state that he has on the critical ladder because of his dullness. And the question of his dullness hasn't been in most criticism of issue.	W.M. Frohock
31:00	The issue has been that as far as literary form was concerned, his novels were, if you like, uninteresting to the critic. Now, maybe that's wrong. That is, maybe I've misunderstood the critic.	W.M. Frohock
31:24	I think that would be a good thing if somebody did it. I wouldn't mind at all, but you're not under the impression that a novelist's dullness keeps him from being read.	W.M. Frohock
31:38	And I would say the same for certain pages of, say, Albertine in À la Recherche du Temps Perdu. I happened to spend a year of my life making sure that a piece of coral rock out in the Pacific Ocean would not move. The Japanese didn't want to move it, but we couldn't go away.	W.M. Frohock
32:09	It was one of the rarest opportunities I've ever had for reading, and I had the Random House two volume Proust out of the chaplain's library.	W.M. Frohock
32:25	That's why you get books. It's the only place you can get books, so that's where it came from. And I kept it for a long, long time, and I read myself assiduously to sleep with it every night. And it was some time before a pair of my fellow defenders of that country admitted to me that they had been taking my bookmark night after night and putting it back in the text INAUDIBLE.	W.M. Frohock
1:15	APPLAUSE	Audience
10:15	LAUGHTER	Audience
11:00	LAUGHTER	Audience
11:51	LAUGHTER	Audience
12:04	LAUGHTER	Audience
12:09	LAUGHTER	Audience
12:17	LAUGHTER	Audience
12:31	LAUGHTER	Audience
14:03	LAUGHTER	Audience
17:32	Well--	Audience
17:34	Lots of them.	Audience
17:38	All of them? Well, one--	Audience
17:46	One question I had for Mr. Frohock was in relation to the moral imagination. I think Mr. Ellison answered very well. But I would like to ask him how he considers-- He made a statement about it not being a moral act to be disgusted with a pigsty or a slum. It seems to me that--	Audience
18:23	Well, the question is whether or not it is more of a moral act to be annoyed or disgusted or want to change a slum, or is it more of another kind of act? It seems to me that when you have an imagination without some kind of morality involved, what you get is Celine and not Mr. Ellison or Richard Wright, a writing of that kind.	Audience
19:00	This is the thing that is lacking in much of literature and that is needed. I think when you abstract-- if you want to go away from the formalist critics but you want something new, what it winds up with is an investigation of the technique that Mr. Ellison uses in this section of the novel that you mentioned, which seemed--	Audience
19:25	I'd like an answer that question, by the way, whether that was apropos. It seemed to me that section of the novel-- this is another question--	Audience
19:34	Second one.	Audience
19:54	LAUGHTER	Audience
19:58	Wasn't the technique in that section more straightforward and more naturalistic?	Audience
20:04	Yes. I thought you were referring particularly to that section in the hospital.	Audience
20:09	Well, what would you posit-- continue the question-- as an activity for the critic in terms of the novel rather than the consideration of the moral imagination?	Audience
20:43	I'm sorry. It wasn't. The main question that I have is whether or not you consider the moral imagination-- with emphasis on the moral-- to be the quintessence of the novelist job and activity.	Audience
20:46	You seem to be throwing out--	Audience
21:07	Yeah.	Audience
21:09	And what would you put?	Audience
21:49	LAUGHTER	Audience
24:46	LAUGHTER	Audience
24:56	LAUGHTER	Audience
25:03	INAUDIBLE it seems like it's awfully--	Audience
25:18	LAUGHTER	Audience
25:53	LAUGHTER	Audience
26:59	I had a question.	Audience
27:00	Fine. Thank you. It seemed to me when Mr. Frohock was speaking-- I'd like to get Mr. Frohock off the hook, but I don't see my way to advise since he apparently has insight into wanting the stuff that I don't have. The idea about manners in the novel and any relevance to this discussion.	Audience
27:19	It seems to me we're drifting clean off into Plutonic orbits in this morality, beauty business. You seem to feel that Mr. Trilling doesn't want to abandon the moral imagination, and yet we have some difficulty in not doing so.	Audience
27:41	And I wondered whether this idea of memories of in the novel is the kind of medial point that Trilling sought that is an invasion or perhaps a solution. In other words, what does Trilling mean by manners and knowledge? Or if you don't know the answer, perhaps someone here does.	Audience
28:50	Now, do you think he means by manners anything like what Eliot means by a way of life when he speaks of that and the idea of political society particularly	Audience
29:32	I know that from something Mr. Frohock said, that he felt that if we had another sort of criticism or a different sort of criticism, a criticism of some kind, a novelist like Sinclair Lewis would be more highly regarded. I wish he would tell me what I can't see. I feel that Sinclair Lewis to many readers today is just dull.	Audience
29:54	I don't see how any kind of criticism can make them change their minds about it being being dull. But if they don't change their minds, why are they going to be interested, and why are they going to read it? I'd like some hint about what this kind of criticism could be and how it would operate.	Audience
30:09	So I think this is quite different from the kind of criticism that enables some people to understand what they previously didn't understand so to find something interesting simply because they're given a wider web, which I don't think would be at all the case about the type of criticism you would have to have, and it's possible, here.	Audience
30:29	LAUGHTER	Audience
31:18	Do you feel then the critic should explain why so many readers do find Lewis dull?	Audience
31:32	No. Are you?	Audience
31:33	LAUGHTER	Audience
31:34	Not in this day INAUDIBLE	Audience
31:36	LAUGHTER	Audience
32:22	LAUGHTER	Audience
32:51	LAUGHTER	Audience
26:03	I'd like to intrude something this, and that is that it seems to me that we're heading towards-- from one side to another-- that the pie in the sky will regenerate to the INAUDIBLE , that type of thing. In the world, there is both order and there is disorder, and it is our responsibility-- each man's responsibility, as well as the artist's responsibility-- to repair, to order, to proceed.	Anthony West
26:35	And the aesthetic experience is something that is above the disorder of the moment. And I think, therefore, that is an argument for the moral responsibility of the writer.	Anthony West
2:20	Well, since I spoke last night of the moral imagination in a favorable tone, I imagine that I'm tarred with Mr. Frohock's brush. And I just want to put in one reservation that I think he's using the term in too limited a fashion to reduce the moral imagination to some kind of ethical concern, as perhaps Mr. Trilling, who is not entirely my favorite critic, does seems to me to be making too little of what I think, as I claimed last night, is a central phenomenon in all fictional or all imaginative writing.	Stanley Hyman
2:55	I would insist, that is, that the moral imagination is not an ethical matter only but is the organization of experience into significance, that is, can be equated with form, can be equated with the craft of art. Insofar as this experience is made meaningful is organized, that is an exercise of the moral imagination.	Stanley Hyman
3:16	These facts are related, are structured meaningfully in relation to human life. And I would add, too, along those lines, to Mr. Frohock's slogan from Baudelaire, one that I think I think is significant there. Freud's slogan, that we must colonize ed with ego. That spreading of the rational, the idea that Freud said was the principle of his work and that is probably the principle of ours, too.	Stanley Hyman
3:41	The idea that somehow we have to drain these irrational marshes is the operation of the artist and, of course, is the operation of the moral imagination in infection and should probably be the critics' concern, too.	Stanley Hyman
4:00	Oh, I would, surely.	Stanley Hyman
7:54	Well, I won't fight for organization, but I'm afraid I have to fight for moral. Organization is perhaps a bad word in that it does suggest this kind of mechanical operation. I'd be glad to move on to any other more satisfactory one. But just seeing this thing in terms of the imagination seems to me, again, to lack enough distinction.	Stanley Hyman
8:15	I suspect that a boy pulling the wings off flies is exercising the imagination so that some other operation is involved in art. And I think probably I liked organization because of that idea of the ordering. There's a poem of Wallace Stevens called "A Jar in Tennessee," I think, about placing a jar on a bare hilltop in Tennessee, and all the wilderness around it comes into shape because of that jar.	Stanley Hyman
8:41	That it seems to me is a little fable of the artist's role. That is, this organization of that wilderness by that jar is, I would insist, a moral act, is an act of the moral imagination, is the creation of art.	Stanley Hyman
21:56	Well, I think we had Mr. Frohock agreeing before if we had a concept of the moral large enough to include the creation of beauty as a moral act, and I thought that he was willing to join on those terms, which it seems to me any deep and meaningful use of moral would include so that if the impulse of some artists is nothing more or less than to make a beautiful thing-- whether it be a pigsty or not-- we would certainly regard that as one of the possible moral activities.	Stanley Hyman
0:01 - 32:51	August 4 Session Discussion	Program
10:52	I don't think I've got very much to say, Mr. Chairman. I just feel that this is no place for a simple-minded Irishman.	Frank O'Connor
11:04	I gathered from Professor Frohock that he was against the criticism of form, and I also gathered that he was against criticism based on the social consciousness. And I also gather that he was against criticism based on ethical consciousness.	Frank O'Connor
11:28	We were apparently starting a new school of criticism to be called the transformists. And the only principle of the transformist school of criticism is if I translate Baudelaire correctly to transform voluptuousness into information.	Frank O'Connor
11:51	--and I wish somebody would clarify it for me. As a mere artist, I feel that I'm being imposed upon, that I'm being asked to do a great number of things which I haven't the faintest intention of doing for anybody.	Frank O'Connor
22:32	All I feel about this, Mr. Chairman, is that we are getting involved in this business of a moralist. I think there are certain novelists who are moralists. For instance, Jane Austen is one. Chekhov is a moralist.	Frank O'Connor
22:46	Their main task is in relating society as they see it to their vision of a good man and a good woman. Trollope is not a moralist. Trollope is quite content to take the ordinary conventions of a society. He's got a wider range than either of these.	Frank O'Connor
23:08	He hasn't got their intensity. I think we should distinguish-- we should admit that there are certain writers who are fundamentally moralists, and there are others who are not. And I entirely fail to understand this general agreement that morality is a form of aesthetics. It isn't.	Frank O'Connor
19:32	INTERPOSING VOICES	Panelists
19:43	INTERPOSING VOICES	Panelists
19:56	INTERPOSING VOICES	Panelists
21:55	INTERPOSING VOICES	Panelists
23:32	INTERPOSING VOICES	Panelists
25:58	INAUDIBLE	Panelists
4:30	I would say, why not just use imagination makes images? That said, in this instance, I would think that the beginning of criticism is that which the writer himself uses when he steps back and looks at his work.	Andrew Lytle
4:52	And I would say that any kind of dramatic treatment of fiction-- that is, where the fiction is dramatic rather than the memoir type of novel-- that if you have some such image at the post as a kind of a controlling factor-- as I think War and Peace, for example, has and many others-- that you get out of this ambiguity.	Andrew Lytle
5:17	By moral, of course, it is an aesthetic point. But it seems to me the mere fact of an image-- that is, an imagination makes pictures and images, and that is controlled through some dramatic action. And I believe-- I mean, I'm objecting also in terms of that to the word organization. I don't believe that's the way it grows.	Andrew Lytle
5:36	I think it is a kind of growth that's controlled, that you use a craft, which is a concrete thing upon the invisible content of the mind. So some way in there, you get the creative act that nobody quite knows how it's done. It is finely mysterious. And it seems to me that in a matter of organization, the moment you organize a thing, you kill it, moment.	Andrew Lytle
6:00	And so that is not actually the process. I know I've been speaking about two different things here. Since it is a general discussion, I propose then that you use just for imagination since it seems to me that is a thing that the artist himself uses directly. And by controlling it by craft, he reaches or may reach what he sets out to reach. But by organization, you will kill the creative act.	Andrew Lytle
9:18	Just a moment here, and then I won't get up any more. I believe I said that you put the image, which might be a symbol, even, at the post of observation. I must say that here I defend not the formless, but those people who use form. Formalism and the formalist-- again, I don't want to be quibbling-- but not quite the word.	Andrew Lytle
9:40	But if you do Suppose you do take a position. Well, don't you get a dichotomy there? That is, if you look only into your own imagination, into yourself, your ego, you get a narcissistic kind of thing. And if you look only over here into the world, you get lost into the discrete objects of the world.	Andrew Lytle
9:59	But if you get kind of an insight into yourself and insight into the world and focus that all through this image here, this controlling image at the point of view, then the matter of the moral issue will be behind in your mind. That's what I'm at. I didn't mean to defend immorality here.	Andrew Lytle
10:17	But that's the kind of thing I mean. It seems to me that is a sort of function that the artist may undertake. In other words, I'm saying the thing of organization-- to come to the other part-- is that it superimposes on the raw matter of the subject before you really know what it is, before you've dealt with it enough, a kind of arbitrary ordering, which might inhibit the creative act.	Andrew Lytle
23:35	There's half a dozen different meanings for the word moral. I'm wondering whether perhaps I'd like to ask Mr. Frohock what-- he doesn't mean that the passionate imagination or the compassionate imagination, the sympathetic imagination, or even the indignant imagination-- but moral imagination, as far as I can see, it seems to me to be a very useless tool.	Harold Humes
23:58	If the aim-- if you accepted the hypothesis that the creation of beauty is a fundamental useless act or not utilitarian in the sense that serves no usable purpose-- that's not its fundamental aim. Someone may get satisfaction out of it incidental to the creation of piece of beauty.	Harold Humes
24:17	But if you inject the notion of moral in the philosophical sense into the use of the imagination as a creative factor in the construction of a thing of beauty, it seems to me that we're no longer talking about art. We're talking about the styling of a new ford It doesn't seem to me to be consistent with the idea of creation. I know I'm being very incoherent about this thing, and I'm glad.	Harold Humes
24:58	Sink or swim.	Harold Humes
15:09	I'm afraid I'm in very much the same position. I would say this, that I rather agree with Mr. Hyman that despite our intentions, the novelist does perform a moral role. And the imagination is moral simply because it creates value.	Ralph Ellison
15:40	Now, you can find in this ethics. You can find in it many other things. But it's implicit, and any form which is so obsessed with time, change, and the mysteries of society-- of course, of human experience.	Ralph Ellison
15:59	I see no way of avoiding the fact that in the very business of selection and ordering, of giving a form of pattern, we do perform a moral operation-- not necessarily in the religious ethical sense, but it's a matter of choice. It's a matter of accepting and rejecting certain aspects of a given experience.	Ralph Ellison
16:31	Incidentally, the novel always looks backward. I guess that was said last night. It's concerned with what has been and through what has been. Through extracting the meaning of what has been, we create values of the day.	Ralph Ellison
16:47	Now, the other thing, which I would say to enforce it, is that the novel means to communicate. It is first of all a medium of communication. I don't care if it's restricted to a small group of existentialists-- you name it. There must be a shared experience in between the process of the novel-- the process which is a novel and the audience which received.	Ralph Ellison
1:29	I think today we should feel that we have the luxury of having time for discussion. Usually, after speeches, there's a great desire for the audience and participants in general to talk. Yet, there isn't enough time. Today, I think we should feel secure and in having at least until about 4:15. Therefore, I think everyone should feel he can say what he wants to say.	Carvel Collins
1:59	I should like to ask if there's any comment from any of the members of the conference. Mr. Hyman? Excuse me. If every speaker would just rise where he is, I believe that these microphones are not speaking to the audience, merely putting the proceedings on tape, and you will be picked up from wherever you are if you look at the microphone. Thank you.	Carvel Collins
3:55	Mr. Frohock, please.	Carvel Collins
4:29	Mr. Lytle?	Carvel Collins
10:49	Mr. O'Connor?	Carvel Collins
12:07	Mr. Frohock?	Carvel Collins
12:08	Yes, please.	Carvel Collins
15:01	Mr. Ellison, would you speak to this subject? I'm not at this moment sure what the subject is, but would you speak to it nevertheless?	Carvel Collins
17:22	Mr. West? Do you have anything to say, got anything to say? Your hand was up a moment ago, sir. Has your question been answered, or would you like to ask it now?	Carvel Collins
17:33	Or a new one?	Carvel Collins
17:36	All right. Any of them. All of them.	Carvel Collins
17:41	Would you stand up please so that the audience can hear you more clearly? Thank you.	Carvel Collins
21:56	Mr. Hyman?	Carvel Collins
22:28	You're in agreement.	Carvel Collins
22:29	Mr. O'Connor?	Carvel Collins
23:31	Mr. Humes	Carvel Collins
23:34	Would you stand up?	Carvel Collins
25:57	Mr. Simenon? Will you?	Carvel Collins
26:01	Yes, please.	Carvel Collins
26:53	All right. Mr. INAUDIBLE ? Will you speak to any aspect of this or introduce a new aspect?	Carvel Collins
29:30	Yes, yes.	Carvel Collins