November 29, 2003
THAT'S ALL:
Hugh Kenner, Commentator on Literary Modernism, Dies at 80 (CHRISTOPHER LEHMANN-HAUPT, 11/25/03, NY Times)
Hugh Kenner, the critic, author and professor of literature regarded as America's foremost commentator on literary modernism, especially the work of Ezra Pound and James Joyce, died yesterday at his home in Athens, Ga. He was 80.He had been suffering from heart problems, his wife, Mary Anne Kenner, said.
The variety of Mr. Kenner's interests was contained in 25 books of his own (he contributed to 200 more) and nearly 1,000 articles, as well as broadcasts and recordings. He wrote commandingly on everything from Irish poetry to geodesic math and Li'l Abner's pappy (Lucifer Ornamental Yokum), to the Heath/Zenith Z-100 computer (one of which he built for himself and then wrote the user's guide) and the animated cartoons of Chuck Jones.
But it was for his pioneering guide to English-language literary modernism and for his books "Dublin's Joyce" (1956), "The Pound Era" (1971) and "Joyce's Voices" (1978) that Mr. Kenner was best known. In these works and others he employed the techniques proposed by the writers themselves to define new standards by which to judge their work.
In "The Pound Era," perhaps his masterwork, he tried to show how the American expatriate poet absorbed the altered sense of time created by Einstein's revolution and helped to pass it on to artists like Joyce, Wyndham Lewis, Eliot, William Carlos Williams and the sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska.
While some faulted Mr. Kenner for attributing to Pound too much prominence in the scheme of modern art, no one failed to be impressed by the vigor and importance of Mr. Kenner's analysis.
Interesting that just recognizing the greatness and influence of Pound and Eliot made him a "conservative" within academia.
MORE:
-ESSAY: Vladimir Nabokov, Tyrants destroyed (Hugh Kenner)
-That's Not All, Folks!: "Of course you know this means war." Who said it? (TERRY TEACHOUT, November 25, 2003, Wall Street Journal)
-A Critic Whose Scholarship Gleamed With His Writing (BENJAMIN IVRY, November 29, 2003, NY Times)
-Hugh Kenner, Modernist Literary Scholar, Dies (Adam Bernstein, November 26, 2003, Washington Post)
-Hugh Kenner: Literary critic with a passion for Ezra Pound (Jon Elek, November 28, 2003, The Guardian )
-INTERVIEW: HUGH KENNER: THE GRAND TOUR (Interview by Harvey Blume, March 2001, BookWire)
-ARCHIVES: Hugh Kenner (NY Review of Books)
-A Special Double Issue : Essays in Honor of Mary Ellen Solt and Hugh Kenner (William Carlos Williams Review)