Something Speaks to Me - by Michel Chaouli (Hardcover)

About the Book

"Everyone's a critic-in the best way. Criticism is what we do when we face a work or event that bowls us over and makes us scramble for a response. We're motivated to criticism by a series of realizations: Something speaks to me, I need to tell you about it, I don't know how. This, Michel Chaouli argues, is the heart of criticism and its difficulty, no matter its form, no matter its refinement. Criticism arises fundamentally from the need to share what overwhelms us. This is not how we usually think of criticism, which we tend to associate with the worlds of scholarship and journalism, with professionals careful not to show themselves being bowled over. But Chaouli is not describing professional criticism per se, but what he calls "poetic criticism." At the same time, he holds that even the stiffest professional criticism "holds somewhere within it, often well hidden, a vulnerability to being jolted by what speaks to it." For Chaouli, the point is not to set poetic criticism against non-poetic criticism, but to encourage more criticism to be done poetically. Written in the mode of a philosophical essay, Something Speaks to Me is less concerned with joining academic debates than with communicating the urgency of criticism in ways that transcend scholarly argument and appeal to readers unschooled in theory"--

Book Synopsis

An account of criticism as an urgent response to what moves us.

Criticism begins when we put down a book to tell someone about it. It is what we do when we face a work or event that bowls us over and makes us scramble for a response. As Michel Chaouli argues, criticism involves three moments: Something speaks to me. I must tell you about it. But I don't know how. The heart of criticism, no matter its form, lies in these surges of thoughts and feelings. Criticism arises from the fundamental need to share what overwhelms us.

We tend to associate criticism with scholarship and journalism. But Chaouli is not describing professional criticism, but what he calls "poetic criticism"--a staging ground for surprise, dread, delight, comprehension, and incomprehension. Written in the mode of a philosophical essay, Something Speaks to Me draws on a wide range of writers, artists, and thinkers, from Kant and Schlegel to Merleau-Ponty, Bachelard, Barthes, and Cavell. Reflecting on these dimensions of poetic experience, Something Speaks to Me is less concerned with joining academic debates than communicating the urgency of criticism.

Review Quotes

"For Chaouli, the essence of poetic criticism (and poetry in general) is that it reaches beyond itself. . . To put it another way: if, as William S. Burroughs famously claimed, language is a virus, then poetic language represents a peculiarly contagious strain. . . Chaouli celebrates a criticism that does not 'spot a lack in the work. . . [and] then rush to fill it', but rather one that revels in opacity and 'not-knowing.' . . . Something Speaks to Me leaves rhetorical questions open-ended. That is, it leaves the reader to fill in the book's gaps and complete its incompleteness. Michel Chaouli wants to infect us all."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"...Chaouli distills his characterization of the process of literary criticism into three steps: 1. Something speaks to me. 2. I must tell you about it. 3. But I don't know how. The three sections of the book correspond to these three moments, also glossed as "intimacy," "urgency" and "opacity." But rather than an argument, each section is a kind of meditation..."-- "The Point Magazine"

"Poetic criticism--you know it when you see it, or rather when you hear it. It is not a program, or a genre, and it is not, in Chaouli's telling, a thing in itself. It is instead a movement, an insinuation, a tendency. And you may encounter it not just in novels and poems but also in contexts remote from the obviously literary or aca­demic: in mainstream book or film reviews, pop-cultural commen­tary, sports journalism, or conversations with friends."-- "Yale Reivew"

"Chaouli presents an extended philosophical essay that investigates and champions poetic criticism. . . . Chaouli explores. . . with breadth and depth, regularly circling back and questioning his own premises and conclusions to move the conversation forward in ways that avoid linearity or closure. . . . This book will appeal to readers interested in swimming with the author through thoughtful musings rather than skating along the surface of an argument plainly laid out."-- "Choice"

"Chaouli's passionate, brooding exploration of poetic criticism should be essential reading not for literary critics alone but for anyone who has fallen under the spell of a powerful work of art and feels the mysterious compulsion to speak about the experience."-- "Stephen Greenblatt, Harvard University"

"If, as Michel Chaouli suggests, there is no greater compliment to pay a work than 'to credit it with the power of arousing the urge of making, ' then this book deserves that high praise. I left its pages grateful to the author for articulating things I've thought but didn't yet have words for, as well as for articulating ideas that hadn't yet occurred to me. Chaouli's prose is patient and pellucid at every turn without ever sacrificing passion or complexity. His book renews my excitement about--and dedication to--poetic criticism, not to mention the sustaining arts of connection and conversation."-- "Maggie Nelson"

"In this startlingly original and elegantly constructed book, Chaouli enacts the very sort of practice which his phenomenology of poetic criticism so brilliantly describes. Something Speaks to Me extends the legacy of Barthes, Baldwin, Sontag, and Adorno, writers for whom criticism meant 'making new sense' as much as 'understanding [existing sense], ' and whose passages are read with unprecedented attention throughout. It is also a unique work: a phenomenology of intimacy, urgency, and opacity. This triad of terms enables Chaouli to explore the philosophical depths of what happens when criticism and participation are seen as interlocking rather than opposing activities, disclosing the seriousness of an underexamined and often unloved practice but also highlighting its everyday joys."-- "Sianne Ngai, University of Chicago"

"Inviting us to look afresh at the experience of reading, Michel Chaouli fuses the poetic and philosophical to stunning effect. To read his words is to be arrested by revelatory turns of phrase and ambushed by insights. Chaouli's luminous prose deserves the widest possible audience."-- "Rita Felski, University of Virginia"

About the Author

Michel Chaouli is professor of German and comparative literature at Indiana University Bloomington, where he also directs the Center for Theoretical Inquiry in the Humanities. His recent publications include Thinking with Kant's "Critique of Judgment" and the coedited volume Poetic Critique: Encounters with Art and Literature.