Reviews for Poetry and Repetition: Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery

The average rating for Poetry and Repetition: Walt Whitman, Wallace Stevens, John Ashbery based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-06-13 00:00:00 William Huls The Mystery to a Solution was such a fantastic book that this, its acknowledged sequel, would have to be a let-down, almost regardless of its own individual merit. That said, this was a let-down. This is a fine book, in its own way, but the long sections on The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (book and film) really have nothing at all to do with Irwin's thesis, and that thesis might have been better served not by a fairly limited survey of several works (Burnett, Cain, Chandler, Hammett and Woolrich), but by simply focusing on The Maltese Falcon and condensing a large chunk of this book into two chapters: one on the book, and another on the film. Irwin, as always, has interesting insights into everything that he discusses, but it just doesn't hang together here. The strong points are the chapters on film noir and the opening chapter on Hammett and the Falcon. Sandwiched between is an awful lot of filling, including a discussion of Woolrich's novel that takes up almost half of the book (when combined with the chapter on the film) and really has nothing to do with the book Irwin has already laid out in his first three chapters. Disappointing, but definitely interesting.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-08-05 00:00:00 Joseph Jennings This is an impressive work of literary criticism because Irwin does nothing but give his own reading and analyses. So much of literary criticism is arguing with other critics and that is why the books are weighed down with a massive amount of footnotes. Dissertation disease: where you have to have read everything an have accounted for any line of thought that preceded yours. Irwin just reads the books and discusses. In the latter chapters Irwin makes a good case that Fitzgerald was more influential that Hemingway (the critics choice) as a key influencer among those hard-boiled writers who aspired to more literary acclaim. And he does a great job comparing the novel vs screenplay versions of The Maltese Falcon and Double Indemnity. All in all this book is chock full of original criticism and others will have to argue with it in their dissertation books.