William Veeder
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William Veeder (born September 14, 1940) is a scholar of 19th century American and British literature and a Professor Emeritus in the Department of English at the University of Chicago. He is also on the Committee on Interdisciplinary Studies in the Humanities at the University of Chicago.[1]
Veeder is particularly known for his work as a Henry James scholar. He believes that Henry James has had the greatest influence on subsequent writers since Wordsworth, and has produced the greatest quantity of quality work since Milton. Professor Veeder’s interests also include the American and English Gothic novel.
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[edit] Early life
Professor Veeder was born on September 14, 1940 in Denver, Colorado to Virginia Holderness and author William H. Veeder. He grew up in Arlington, Virginia. His grandfather used to write Professor Veeder’s name as “Billie,” which infuriated Veeder’s mother, as she felt that nicknames ending in “ie” were effeminate. Professor Veeder has since carried this belief into some of his literary criticism.
[edit] Education
Professor Veeder completed his undergraduate studies at Notre Dame, and then spent two years at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he earned his M.F.A. Bharati Mukherjee was in his year at Iowa. [2] Veeder received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1969, and joined the faculty at the University of Chicago that same year.
[edit] Critical Methodology
Professor Veeder’s critical methodology is primarily rooted in psychoanalysis and gender theory, but he is also a strong advocate of close reading, a critical approach whereby “one gets to content through form”. [3] Just as the reader gets to content through form, Professor Veeder also believes the reader gets to meaning through feeling. Specifically, he is guided by a quote from an art criticism essay written by Henry James, in which James asserted, “In the arts, feeling is always meaning.” Professor Veeder begins his classes with this quote, usually underlining the words “always” and "meaning” and capitalizing the word “always.” [4] [5]
[edit] The So What
One of Professor Veeder’s main ideas is The So What. When a critic discovers something interesting about a text, she must then ask herself, “so what? What makes this important?” Veeder often applies another James quote: “When the art is great, then the reader does quite half the work.”
[edit] Form to Content, Feeling to Meaning
Professor Veeder believes that in the wake of the heyday of New Criticism some 50 years ago, we have entered an age of contextualization, specifically in regard to the study of genres. His approach is largely founded upon the notion that specific formal devices produce specific affects. In his Short Story class, he gives the following example:
- My car is red.
- Red is my car.
- My BMW M Roadster is sanguinary as the sunset of Phoebus Apollo.
The first and second sentences have identical diction and different syntax, whereas the first and third have the same syntax and different diction. Each sentence, according to Veeder, produces a different affect. His methodology looks at what he calls the psychology of the production of the sentence. This, he claims, is how we get from fact to affect and consequently to meaning in our experience of literature.
The affect is influenced both by the reader and by the text. This is partly where context comes into play: Professor Veeder asserts that the form of the text contributes intrinsically to the text’s meaning, not only in terms of diction and syntax, but of genre as well. When reading short stories, we have to ask why the writer chose the form of a short story as opposed to an essay, manifesto, or letter. In trying to understand this, we need to consider what fiction’s way of dealing with themes is, as a genre. By way of explanation, Veeder sometimes notes that we are different people in different contexts – whether writing an e-mail to a friend, writing an essay for a class, etc.
Contextualization is a factor in a somewhat Structuralist interpretation: for example, in a sentence where “of” is used in a way that “for” would normally be employed, the reader must have knowledge of the more typical use of “for” in conventions or stereotypes in order to understand the power (and meaning) of the use of the word “of.” In this way, Veeder says, our minds work like databases, where we store not only data, but also what that meaning means to us.
There are two general epistemological positions in literary studies. The first is that the meaning is in the text, and therefore entirely objective, and the second is that the meaning is in the reader, and therefore entirely subjective. (While this is how Professor Veeder phrases this point, he notes that "in" is an inept word here.) Professor Veeder holds a third position, which he says is very much in keeping with William James’ Pragmatism: the intersection between the reader and the text produces meaning. It is in the mode of becoming, not being. Professor Veeder says, “Your intersection with beauty will produce something beautiful which is yourself at that moment.”
[edit] Ideology
Professor Veeder holds that literary criticism should show more about the critic than the writer. He believes that, while great art complicates ideology, it is not possible to read without ideology. His is gender and psychology. In his analysis, he employs the theories of such thinkers as Heinz Kohut, Donald Winnicott, Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Melanie Klein, and Carl Jung; specifically notions of holding, mirroring, the good-enough mother, the good breast, the phallic mother, and Freud’s stages of development.
[edit] Synonyms
Professor Veeder does not believe in synonyms. One word cannot be interchangeable for another, because all words produce different responses (affects or feelings).
[edit] Academic Courses
Professor Veeder currently teaches "Introduction to Fiction: The Short Story" and "Fiction of Three Americas". In the past, he has taught such classes as:
- Fiction’s Fiction
- The Contemporary Historical Novel
- 19th Century American Gothic
- American Fiction in the Nineteenth Century
- Henry James: The Great Novellas
- Henry James: Fiction of Crisis [6]
[edit] Works
Professor Veeder has also been working for over 25 years on a historical novel about Ambrose Bierce and Emma Frances Dawson. The structure of the novel is "experiential," following Professor Veeder’s form-to-content style of literary criticism.[7]
Professor Veeder's publications include:
- Henry James, the Lessons of the Master: Popular Fiction and Personal Style in the Nineteenth Century. University of Chicago Press, 1975. [8]
- The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837-1883, Volume 1: Defining Voices. Elizabeth K. Helsinger, Robin Lauterbach Sheets, William Veeder. University of Chicago Press, 1989, c1983. [9]
- The Woman Question: Society and Literature in Britain and America, 1837-1883, Volume 2: Social Issues. Elizabeth K. Helsinger, Robin Lauterbach Sheets, William Veeder. University of Chicago Press, 1989, c1983. [10]
- Mary Shelley & Frankenstein: the Fate of Androgyny. University of Chicago Press, 1986. [11]
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: After One Hundred Years. Edited by William Veeder and Gordon Hirsch. University of Chicago Press, 1988. [12]
- Art of Criticism. Edited by William Veeder and Susan M. Griffin. University of Chicago Press, 1988. [13]
- Essays on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Anglo-American gothic texts; psychoanalysis; gender issues; popular culture.
His essays have appeared in:
- The Henry James Review
- New essays on The portrait of a lady. Edited by Joel Porte. Cambridge University Press, 1990.
- Henry James: the shorter fiction, reassessments. Edited by N.H. Reeve. St. Martin’s Press, 1997.
- American gothic: new interventions in a national narrative. Edited by Robert K. Martin & Eric Savoy. University of Iowa Press, c1998.
- Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Edited and with an introduction by Harold Bloom.
[edit] Veederisms
"Without the So What, there’s no reason for us being here.”
“The purpose of literary criticism is to increase the pleasure of reading, to provide additional beauty, power, truth – via your familiarity with the text. That familiarity comes from a superior knowledge of a text, not a command of the text. We can never have a command of beauty.”
“Meaning comes from feeling, and is designed to give feelings to readers who are desperately in need of them from being worn down by the daily grind.”
“Great art complicates ideology.”
“Feeling is the center of art. ”
“Genius is not a spontaneous production of the new. We have this image of the solitary genius who brings for something never seen before – it’s just not possible. Genius is a new combination of old elements.”
“Good writing doesn’t tell you what to do, it tells you what not to do.”
“All of us are terrified. The question is: can we be brave?”
“Art is always vaster and more intelligent and braver than we are.”
“Realization of our desires means there’s nothing more to say.”
“You are a lesser person if you believe in synonyms.”
“That’s why I think victim theory is so bad. Because life, no matter how terrible it is, is better than that.”
"It's better to be a fuck up than hopeless."
"The central horror in Western culture is the family."
[edit] Trivia
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Professor Veeder named his daughter Maisie after the young protagonist in Henry James’ What Maisie Knew, which he teaches in his class “Henry James: Fiction of Crisis.”
