A Formalist Critique of the Novels by Charles Reznikoff

Charles Reznikoff:

A Formalist Critique of The Novels

Charles Reznikoff's novels are presently out of print. Forgotten amidst the wealth of poetry (although that too is slowly vanishing, or at least relegated to a cult status) and undervalued (in terms of readership and critical examination), the novels represent something of an oddity: While presenting dramatic unity, Reznikoff remains consistent with his Objectivist stylistic approach and technique. Both Family Chronicle and The Manner Music resist melodramatic impulses, contrived character conflicts, and overactive verbal flair; instead the novels are pieced together with Reznikoff's power of clinical detail, where every detail is just as important as every action. In this paper I will examine the effectiveness and implications of this style as it relates to the novels.

The circumstances by which the publisher of Black Sparrow Press John Martin discovered Charles Reznikoff's The Manner Music manuscript in 1976 makes a greater difference in the privilege of the reading:

I have recently gone through Charles Reznikoff's lifetime accumulation of manuscript, and was thunderstruck to find a carefully typed, completed novel, which he apparently never mentioned to anyone, or submitted for publication. It was, I think, composed in the early 1950's…

I believe this novel was written in response to a letter William Carlos Williams wrote Charles in the late 1940's, at a time when Charles' career was at a low ebb, urging him to continue writing at any cost, and if possible to write a novel…

(Martin, Introduction to The Manner Music, 5-6)