The New Yorker & Me: Down with "Dialogical"

Introduction

What is The New Yorker? I know it’s a great magazine and that it’s a tremendous source of pleasure in my life. But what exactly is it? This blog’s premise is that The New Yorker is a work of art, as worthy of comment and analysis as, say, Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Each week I review one or more aspects of the magazine’s latest issue. I suppose it’s possible to describe and analyze an entire issue, but I prefer to keep my reviews brief, and so I usually focus on just one or two pieces, to explore in each the signature style of its author. A piece by Nick Paumgarten is not like a piece by Jill Lepore, and neither is like a piece by Ian Frazier. One could not mistake Collins for Seabrook, or Bilger for Goldfield, or Mogelson for Kolbert. Each has found a style, and it is that style that I respond to as I read, and want to understand and describe.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Down with "Dialogical"

Van Gogh, from letter to Émile Bernard, March 18, 1888

“Dialogical” – what an ugly word! It sounds like something left over from the wastelands of Soviet industrialism. It’s like a cross between “dialectical” and “diabolical.” It's like the sluggish churning sound of an old washing machine - dialogical dialogical dialogical. Patrick Grant, in his The Letters of Vincent van Gogh: A Critical Study (2014), uses it to describe Van Gogh’s writing. He suggests that “a dialogical interplay among religion, morality, and art provides an implicit, quasi-narrative structure to the correspondence.” He refers to “the dialogical evolution of Van Gogh’s thinking.” He views the shifts in Van Gogh’s idealism as a “dialogical process.” He refers to “the dialogical complexities of Van Gogh’s writing.” He talks about “the dialogical transformations that the letters record.” That’s a lot of “dialogical” to digest. What does it mean? I think it stems from the word “dialogue,” as in a dialogue between religion and morality or a dialogue between morality and art. Grant’s theory is that Van Gogh’s writing embodies such dialogues. Okay, I get it. Analytically, "dialogical" might be justified. Aesthetically - as a description of Van Gogh's glorious, direct, spontaneous, talking letters - it's a dud.