Reviews for Taboo Subjects: Race, Sex, and Psychoanalysis

The average rating for Taboo Subjects: Race, Sex, and Psychoanalysis based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-11-08 00:00:00 BRIAN CRAWLEY Southern writer Richard Marius was assigned by Harvard to teach Faulkner, much to his disappointment -- I think he wanted to teach English poetry or French philosophy or something. This book consists of his lectures on each of the first 13 novels, through Go Down, Moses; plus two or three more on major recurring topics such as race and mythology. They are terrific ruminations and discussions on each book. He has his own particular points of view on some subjects, from modernism to religion, and that does affect his "reviews" of the novels. But he is respectful, even of the worst (like Mosquitoes and Sanctuary) and he managed to make me want to reread Pylon, usually considered another stinker. He only taught the course a couple years, but it became extremely popular, and it is quite evident why. His look at what he thought Faulkner was doing is insightful and generous and Marius is not afraid to say when he doesn't have a clue about a motivation or a meaning. A great way to revisit and refresh yourself on the single greatest oeuvre in American literature.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-05-05 00:00:00 Nikolay Alekseev S. T. Joshi, the eminent Lovecraft scholar, is not so much a literary critic as a bibliographer with opinions. Strong ones. But his opinions are invariably worth reading, even - perhaps particularly - at their most truculent and (occasionally) pedantic. He is unashamedly elitist, while at the same time aware that the literature that he loves most is considered, by other shameless elitists, as rubbish. This makes him simultaneously critical and defensive, which may be why he often seems in a bad mood. He is also in the ambivalent position of being a card-carrying sceptic and liberal in a field that is dominated by the illiberal and the obscurantist. 'The Modern Weird Tale' will probably be most controversial for Joshi's unrelenting critique of Stephen King. Personally, I am happy to see the King bubble pricked: King is not a bad writer, and in some ways he is an admirable one, but he is certainly overrated, and most of Joshi's critical barbs strike home, even if his overall attack seems a little unfair. The most rewarding chapters, though, are those dealing with the authors that Joshi admires: Jackson, Aickman, Tryon, Campbell, Klein, Ligotti. In these his style is generous, warm and clear-headed - although his section on Robert Aickman he is curiously led astray by a philosophical red-herring. In a way, it is the Aickman section that shows Joshi at his most interesting, and conflicted: an intelligent, rational man trying to come to terms with his engagement in a field that goes against so many of his dearly held principles...