American Culture, Canons, and the Case of Elizabeth Stoddard Book

Recommended for me by a professor who is a reader on my master's thesis. At first I was skeptical- really, another critical tome, as I'm scurrying to get a hold on my own scribbling and putting everything together? I'm good with the face to face conversation but on paper it's a different story- my poor prose is all alone, on its own, with nothing but an invisible interlocutor to parse meaning and significance. It's scary, it's graphophobia, it's fear and cowardice and general writerliness writ large on the widescreen doom of scholarly academia.

Can't get away with much lyricism, it's got to fit a preordained jargon-and-theory suitcoat (straightjacket?) in oder to pass through customs when all it wants to do is run free all antidiluvian and fresh-pitted. not for nothing did Nietzsche insist on "good air! good air!" for his dangerous, calamitous, writhing paradoxes and seer's blues which told the 19th Century it was time to look its dark, anguished, denial-riddled self in the deep, dark truthful mirror and then, ever so slightly, tilted that mirror till it was flat and the void opened on the other side....

But I'm actually really loving this book. I appreciate the personal voice when the dude has to fret about tenure and conferences and MLA and whatever. I'll fill that blank space up later.
The writing isn't bad, either: punchy, precise, almost staccato at times, able to keep some winding discourse together without overcrowding the text or the mind of the reader too much. I mean if you're reading a book like this you've got to presuppose at least a passing familiarity with people like, say, Kant and Kafka and Faulkner and Proust. At least be conversational, as am merely with the first and last in the list. I can claim a bit more of a grip with the middle two fellows, but that's not completely necessary, I think, to be able to appreciate the criticism that is offered.

I'd like to quote directly from the text and limn the outline of the argument a little bit but I just pulled a rather productive all-nighter, as is my wont, and would rather just check back in with whoever is reading this (I love you! Seriously!) when I'm finished and I can let Weinstein shine through in all his persnickety glory.

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Officially Finished!

(More detailed stuff to follow once I'm through with my project)