Perry Meisel
Encyclopedia
Perry Meisel is Professor of English at New York University
. He has written extensively on British and American modernism
, theory, psychoanalysis, rock, jazz, and popular culture
. In addition to numerous books, his writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review
, The Village Voice
, Partisan Review
, October
, Salmagundi
, The Ontario Review, and many other publications.
. He entered Yale in the late 1960s, where he received his BA in English and History in 1970. He taught at Yale the following year as a Carnegie Fellow. He received his PhD at Yale in English in 1975, writing on Virginia Woolf
under the direction of J. Hillis Miller
. In graduate school, Meisel taught at Yale and Wesleyan; he also wrote on rock and jazz for Crawdaddy!
and The Boston Phoenix
. In 1972, he published his first book, a study of Thomas Hardy
’s fiction.
Meisel came to New York University in 1975 and was an important champion of New York’s downtown scene as well as of the structuralist
and post-structuralist
theory of Barthes
, Foucault
, Derrida
, Lacan
, and Althusser
. In 1975, he also began writing for The Village Voice, covering rock and jazz for music editor Robert Christgau
and a variety of topics for arts editor Richard Goldstein
. In 1978, Meisel was a charter Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities
, co-ordinating a reading group on theory whose members included Rosalind Krauss
and Susan Sontag
. In 1980, he published The Absent Father, a study of Virginia Woolf’s aestheticism
and, in 1981, edited a collection of essays on Freud
as literature. That year, Meisel was awarded tenure at NYU. In 1985, he co-edited, with Walter Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud, the letters of Freud’s English translators, James
and Alix Strachey
. In the 1980s he also taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University. In 1987, he published The Myth of the Modern, and became full professor at NYU.
In 1987, Meisel also fell ill. A diagnosis eluded him until seven years later, when it was discovered that he suffered from an intractable case of temporal lobe epilepsy
, resulting in frequent partial seizures from abrupt changes in light and noise and from digital and other new technologies. His physicians included Oliver Sacks
. Epilepsy and its complications forced Meisel to retreat from public activity. He took refuge in his teaching and benefited from a greater literary productivity, turning his attention more exclusively to literature, theory, and psychoanalysis. In 1984, he had begun writing for The New York Times Book Review. The Cowboy and the Dandy appeared in 1999, The Literary Freud in 2007. In 2010, The Myth of Popular Culture appeared as a Blackwell Manifesto. In 2011, Meisel co-edited, with Haun Saussy, Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, restoring Wade Baskin's original translation and providing the first critical edition of Saussure's lectures to appear in English. He served as a contributing editor
of American Imago
from 2001 to 2011 and is a member of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.
, “Not Knowing”
“How does one answer Perry Meisel?”—Gerald Graff
, Literature Against Itself
The Myth of the Modern is a deconstruction of the canonical British modernists. The Cowboy and the Dandy argues that rock and roll
is the crossroads of Romanticism
and African American culture
. The Literary Freud shows how Freud’s description of the mind succeeds by doubling it as an activity constantly seeking coherence.
The Myth of Popular Culture discusses the dialectic of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” in popular culture through an examination of literature, film, and popular music
. With topics ranging from John Keats
to John Ford
, the book responds to, among many other things, Adorno
’s theory that popular culture is not dialectical by showing that it is.
The Myth of Popular Culture from Dante to Dylan (Blackwell 2010)
The Literary Freud (Routledge 2007)
The Cowboy and the Dandy: Crossing Over from Romanticism to Rock and Roll (Oxford 1999)
The Myth of the Modern: A Study in British Literature and Criticism after 1850 (Yale 1987)
Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924-25, Co-ed with Walter Kendrick (Basic 1985)
Freud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. (Prentice-Hall
1981)
The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater (Yale 1980)
Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Repressed (Yale 1972)
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. He has written extensively on British and American modernism
American modernism
American modernism like modernism in general is a trend of thought that affirms the power of human beings to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of scientific knowledge, technology and practical experimentation, and is thus in its essence both progressive and optimistic...
, theory, psychoanalysis, rock, jazz, and popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...
. In addition to numerous books, his writing has appeared in The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
, The Village Voice
The Village Voice
The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...
, Partisan Review
Partisan Review
Partisan Review was an American political and literary quarterly published from 1934 to 2003, though it suspended publication between October 1936 and December 1937.-Overview:...
, October
October (journal)
October is a peer-reviewed academic journal specializing in contemporary art, criticism, and theory, published by the MIT Press.-History:...
, Salmagundi
Salmagundi (magazine)
Salmagundi is a quarterly periodical of the Humanities and Social Sciences which aims to address the general reader. It was founded in 1965, and Skidmore College has produced it since 1969. The name refers to Salmagundi, a salad dish originating in early 17th century England.-External links:* *...
, The Ontario Review, and many other publications.
Bio
Born in Louisiana, Meisel grew up in New York, attending public schools in Dobbs Ferry and then the Horace Mann SchoolHorace Mann School
Horace Mann School is an independent college preparatory school in New York City, New York, United States founded in 1887 known for its rigorous course of studies. Horace Mann is a member of the Ivy Preparatory School League, educating students from all across the New York tri-state area from...
. He entered Yale in the late 1960s, where he received his BA in English and History in 1970. He taught at Yale the following year as a Carnegie Fellow. He received his PhD at Yale in English in 1975, writing on Virginia Woolf
Virginia Woolf
Adeline Virginia Woolf was an English author, essayist, publisher, and writer of short stories, regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary figures of the twentieth century....
under the direction of J. Hillis Miller
J. Hillis Miller
Joseph Hillis Miller, Jr. is an American literary critic who has been heavily influenced by—and who has heavily influenced—deconstruction.- Early life and education :...
. In graduate school, Meisel taught at Yale and Wesleyan; he also wrote on rock and jazz for Crawdaddy!
Crawdaddy!
Crawdaddy! was the first U.S. magazine of rock and roll music criticism. Created in 1966 by college student Paul Williams in response to the increasing sophistication and cultural influence of popular music, Crawdaddy! was self-described as "the first magazine to take rock and roll...
and The Boston Phoenix
The Phoenix (newspaper)
The Phoenix is the name of several alternative weekly newspapers published in the United States by Phoenix Media/Communications Group of Boston, Massachusetts including the Boston Phoenix, the Providence Phoenix, the Portland Phoenix and the now-defunct Worcester Phoenix...
. In 1972, he published his first book, a study of Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist and poet. While his works typically belong to the Naturalism movement, several poems display elements of the previous Romantic and Enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural.While he regarded himself primarily as a...
’s fiction.
Meisel came to New York University in 1975 and was an important champion of New York’s downtown scene as well as of the structuralist
Structuralism
Structuralism originated in the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the subsequent Prague and Moscow schools of linguistics. Just as structural linguistics was facing serious challenges from the likes of Noam Chomsky and thus fading in importance in linguistics, structuralism...
and post-structuralist
Post-structuralism
Post-structuralism is a label formulated by American academics to denote the heterogeneous works of a series of French intellectuals who came to international prominence in the 1960s and '70s...
theory of Barthes
Roland Barthes
Roland Gérard Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes' ideas explored a diverse range of fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism, anthropology and...
, Foucault
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault , born Paul-Michel Foucault , was a French philosopher, social theorist and historian of ideas...
, Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, Lacan
Jacques Lacan
Jacques Marie Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis and philosophy, and has been called "the most controversial psycho-analyst since Freud". Giving yearly seminars in Paris from 1953 to 1981, Lacan influenced France's...
, and Althusser
Louis Althusser
Louis Pierre Althusser was a French Marxist philosopher. He was born in Algeria and studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he eventually became Professor of Philosophy....
. In 1975, he also began writing for The Village Voice, covering rock and jazz for music editor Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
and a variety of topics for arts editor Richard Goldstein
Richard Goldstein (writer born 1944)
Richard Goldstein is an American journalist and writer. He wrote for the Village Voice from June 1966 until 2004, eventually becoming executive editor. He specializes in gay and lesbian issues, music, and counterculture topics....
. In 1978, Meisel was a charter Fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities
New York Institute for the Humanities
The New York Institute for the Humanities is an academic organisation affiliated with New York University, founded by Richard Sennett in 1976 to promote the exchange of ideas between academics, professionals and the general public. The NYIH regularly holds seminars open to the public, as well as...
, co-ordinating a reading group on theory whose members included Rosalind Krauss
Rosalind E. Krauss
Rosalind Epstein Krauss is an American art critic and theorist; she is a professor at Columbia University in New York City. In 1985 a monograph of essays by Krauss, titled The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths was published by The MIT Press.-Early life :Rosalind Krauss grew...
and Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag
Susan Sontag was an American author, literary theorist, feminist and political activist whose works include On Photography and Against Interpretation.-Life:...
. In 1980, he published The Absent Father, a study of Virginia Woolf’s aestheticism
Aestheticism
Aestheticism was a 19th century European art movement that emphasized aesthetic values more than socio-political themes for literature, fine art, the decorative arts, and interior design...
and, in 1981, edited a collection of essays on Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
as literature. That year, Meisel was awarded tenure at NYU. In 1985, he co-edited, with Walter Kendrick, Bloomsbury/Freud, the letters of Freud’s English translators, James
James Strachey
James Beaumont Strachey was a British psychoanalyst, and, with his wife Alix, a translator of Sigmund Freud into English...
and Alix Strachey
Alix Strachey
Alix Strachey , née Sargant-Florence, was an American-born British psychoanalyst and with her husband the translator into English of the works of Sigmund Freud....
. In the 1980s he also taught as a visiting professor at Columbia University. In 1987, he published The Myth of the Modern, and became full professor at NYU.
In 1987, Meisel also fell ill. A diagnosis eluded him until seven years later, when it was discovered that he suffered from an intractable case of temporal lobe epilepsy
Epilepsy
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. These seizures are transient signs and/or symptoms of abnormal, excessive or hypersynchronous neuronal activity in the brain.About 50 million people worldwide have epilepsy, and nearly two out of every three new cases...
, resulting in frequent partial seizures from abrupt changes in light and noise and from digital and other new technologies. His physicians included Oliver Sacks
Oliver Sacks
Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE , is a British neurologist and psychologist residing in New York City. He is a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University, where he also holds the position of Columbia Artist...
. Epilepsy and its complications forced Meisel to retreat from public activity. He took refuge in his teaching and benefited from a greater literary productivity, turning his attention more exclusively to literature, theory, and psychoanalysis. In 1984, he had begun writing for The New York Times Book Review. The Cowboy and the Dandy appeared in 1999, The Literary Freud in 2007. In 2010, The Myth of Popular Culture appeared as a Blackwell Manifesto. In 2011, Meisel co-edited, with Haun Saussy, Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, restoring Wade Baskin's original translation and providing the first critical edition of Saussure's lectures to appear in English. He served as a contributing editor
Contributing editor
A contributing editor is a magazine job title that varies in responsibilities. Most often, a contributing editor is a freelancer who has proven ability and readership draw. The contributing editor regularly contributes articles to the publication but does not actually edit articles, and the title...
of American Imago
American Imago
American Imago is an academic journal established in 1939 by Sigmund Freud and Hanns Sachs. It seeks to explore the role of psychoanalysis in contemporary cultural, literary, and social theory, while also considering issues related to anthropology, philosophy, politics, history, art history,...
from 2001 to 2011 and is a member of the Institute for the History of Psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College of Cornell University.
Influence
“Zeno, to demonstrate that he too knows a thing or two, quotes Perry Meisel.”—Donald BarthelmeDonald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme was an American author known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the Houston Post, managing editor of Location magazine, director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston , co-founder of Fiction Donald...
, “Not Knowing”
“How does one answer Perry Meisel?”—Gerald Graff
Gerald Graff
Gerald Graff is a professor of English and Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Chicago in 1959 and his Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Stanford University in 1963...
, Literature Against Itself
Major works
Meisel’s major works include The Myth of the Modern (1987), The Cowboy and the Dandy (1999), The Literary Freud (2007), and The Myth of Popular Culture (2010).The Myth of the Modern is a deconstruction of the canonical British modernists. The Cowboy and the Dandy argues that rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
is the crossroads of Romanticism
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
and African American culture
African American culture
African-American culture, also known as black culture, in the United States refers to the cultural contributions of Americans of African descent to the culture of the United States, either as part of or distinct from American culture. The distinct identity of African-American culture is rooted in...
. The Literary Freud shows how Freud’s description of the mind succeeds by doubling it as an activity constantly seeking coherence.
The Myth of Popular Culture discusses the dialectic of “highbrow” and “lowbrow” in popular culture through an examination of literature, film, and popular music
Popular music
Popular music belongs to any of a number of musical genres "having wide appeal" and is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. It stands in contrast to both art music and traditional music, which are typically disseminated academically or orally to smaller, local...
. With topics ranging from John Keats
John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.Although his poems were not...
to John Ford
John Ford
John Ford was an American film director. He was famous for both his westerns such as Stagecoach, The Searchers, and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and adaptations of such classic 20th-century American novels as The Grapes of Wrath...
, the book responds to, among many other things, Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
’s theory that popular culture is not dialectical by showing that it is.
Works
Course in General Linguistics. Co-ed. with Haun Saussy. Trans. Wade Baskin. By Ferdinand de Saussure (Columbia 2011)The Myth of Popular Culture from Dante to Dylan (Blackwell 2010)
- "Boundary-smashing." -Richard Goldstein
The Literary Freud (Routledge 2007)
- "It is by far the best treatment of the literary Freud available, and should be widely read and used, both by scholars and students of literature and of psychoanalysis." –Harold Bloom
The Cowboy and the Dandy: Crossing Over from Romanticism to Rock and Roll (Oxford 1999)
- “Rock is the product of a confluence of ‘country and city’—19th-century English Romanticism and African-AmericanAfrican AmericanAfrican Americans are citizens or residents of the United States who have at least partial ancestry from any of the native populations of Sub-Saharan Africa and are the direct descendants of enslaved Africans within the boundaries of the present United States...
blues tradition—that is prefigured in the process by which the small-group ‘jump’ jazz of urban jukebox idols of the 1940's like Louis JordanLouis JordanLouis Thomas Jordan was a pioneering American jazz, blues and rhythm & blues musician, songwriter and bandleader who enjoyed his greatest popularity from the late 1930s to the early 1950s. Known as "The King of the Jukebox", Jordan was highly popular with both black and white audiences in the...
evolved into full-fledged rhythm and bluesRhythm and bluesRhythm and blues, often abbreviated to R&B, is a genre of popular African American music that originated in the 1940s. The term was originally used by record companies to describe recordings marketed predominantly to urban African Americans, at a time when "urbane, rocking, jazz based music with a...
.”—The New York Times Book Review
The Myth of the Modern: A Study in British Literature and Criticism after 1850 (Yale 1987)
- “Much of the literature now honored as modernist purports to confront the alienating complexity and spiritual depletion of modern life. Perry Meisel’s new book persuasively calls this popular assumption into question.”—The New York Times Book Review
- “Fantastically antithetical.”—Louis Menand, Raritan
Bloomsbury/Freud: The Letters of James and Alix Strachey, 1924-25, Co-ed with Walter Kendrick (Basic 1985)
Freud: A Collection of Critical Essays. Ed. (Prentice-Hall
Prentice Hall
Prentice Hall is a major educational publisher. It is an imprint of Pearson Education, Inc., based in Upper Saddle River, New Jersey, USA. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6-12 and higher-education market. Prentice Hall distributes its technical titles through the Safari...
1981)
The Absent Father: Virginia Woolf and Walter Pater (Yale 1980)
- “Meisel is the only critic of my acquaintance to have grasped the radically deconstructed character of Woolf’s texts.”—Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics
Thomas Hardy: The Return of the Repressed (Yale 1972)