The Literary Bent

Book excerpt: What is "literature in these postmodern, postcanonical times? And if a small number of works being written today are "literary," what distinguishes them from those many others that are not? The store managers who shelve books in separate "literature" and "fiction" sections clearly have something in mind, but they're not talking. James Bloom has his own ideas, and he is. With zest and conviction, Bloom argues that traditional aspirations to literariness persist in the poetry and fiction of writers such as Robert Stone, Jane Smiley, Salman Rushdie, Toni Morrison, Adrienne Rich, and Robert Pinsky. All, in their various ways, exhibit a critical and playful awareness of their literary antecedents, display and resist the seductions of eloquence, arouse and discipline their readers' curiosity. Bloom deftly shows how their writings negotiate with the nonliterary media that dominate our culture, even as the cultural capital of canonical authors like Shakespeare and Keats is put to work on the pages of mail-order catalogs and the New York Times, on network television, and in the products of the Disney conglomerate.