We woke up this morning to see this beautiful piece by Stanley Fish in the New York Times blog – “Literary Criticism Comes To The Movies” – As our friend Ken Nielsen cleverly describes it – “Stanley Fish’s thoughtful column on why Howl is not only a movie about a text, but actually a movie becoming its own text about a text. It’s a performance of literary criticism.”
“There are movies based on literary works (“Paradise Lost” is on the way, I am told), bio-pics about literary greats (“Bright Star,” “The Hours”), movies that feature a bit of literary criticism (“Animal House,” “Dead Poets Society,” “The History Boys”), even movies — documentaries — about literary critics (Zizek and Derrida, who are only literary critics occasionally), but no movies I know of about literary criticism as such. None, that is, until “Howl,” the new movie about Allen Ginsberg starring James Franco, which is not only about literary criticism but is the performance of literary criticism, an extended “explication de texte”…
He continues..