Equipment for Living. Kenneth Burke
admonitions when we are attempting to sum up just what is involved in our being the kind of symbol-using, speech-acting animal we are, as viewed in terms of MOTION, ACTION, and ATTITUDE.
In the end, Burke is always interested in ways that literature allows readers to better understand the complex situations of their own lives. Occasionally, this act involves including details from his own, as he does in “Imaginary Lines” (1962) when he relates Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle with his own experience “of truly apocalyptic terror” at the planetarium or when he compares reading James Daly’s One Season Shattered (1936) to seeing the framed aphorism “Laugh and the world laughs with you—weep and you weep alone” on a wall from his childhood. At one point, Burke admits to imbibing as a way of approaching more appropriately the poetry of Hart Crane. Experience can clarify art, and art can clarify experience, as it does in Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers. Burke writes in the review “Permanence and Change” (1934) about readers recognizing recurrent situations in art:
They were the “key” situations of the tribe that had evolved them, after all that could be forgotten had been forgotten and all that could not be forgotten had been made salient. They were not “facts,” as legalistic precedents are, but communal works of art. And when the individual understood his own role by reference to them (saying, “I am like Jacob,” or “This situation is like Leah’s”) he was being himself and a member of his group simultaneously.
Some readers will notice that this review shares its title with one of Burke’s earlier books, but the similarities do not end there. Many of these reviews are quite revelatory of Burke’s later writings, referencing and anticipating them both directly and indirectly. Before it appears in Permanence and Change, Burke’s wily old trout, the famed example of overcoming trained incapacity, makes a cameo in the review “Poets All” (1933). Elsewhere, Burke gives a unique definition of perspective by incongruity in his review “Corrosive Without Corrective” (1938). Other characteristic Burkean concerns are more subtle but just as pervasive. His obsession with form is everywhere, but those interested in finding specific manifestations might do well to examine “Engineering with Words” (1923) and “Delight and Tears” (1924). Burke is also quite fond of revealing the influence of terministic screens wherever he can, and he makes fascinating explorations into their operation in “Heaven’s First Law” (1922) and “Intelligence as a Good” (1930). If parts of Burke are everywhere in these reviews, some reviews find much of Burke encapsulated, with “Words as Deeds” and "Kermode Revisited" perhaps, being the most thorough discussions of his larger works. Burkeology abounds in this collection, and Burke’s fingerprints are all over these reviews. Even titles reflect his concern with terminology, situation, and applicability: “The Criticism of Criticism” (1955), “On Covery, Re- and Dis-” (1953), “Renaming Old Directions” (1935), “Cautious Enlightenment” (1936), “The Editing of Oneself” (1921), “A Gist of Gists of Gists” (1937).
These concerns create a complexity and nuance which make Burke hard to pin down. Burke chases many leads in these reviews, but the constant approach is active reading that values literature as equipment for living. Burke writes, “You will note, I think, that there is no ‘pure’ literature here. Everything is ‘medicine’” (Philosophy 293). Literature can act not only as medicine, but as strategy, as attitude, as vehicle, as sociology. If Burke conceives of literature as medicine, then think of these reviews as prescriptions. If he conceives of literature as strategy, then think of this book as the war room. If Burke conceives of literature as equipment for living, then consider this book the blueprint.
Notes
1. Burke quotes this passage in his review of J.L. Austin, "Words as Deeds."
2. Though Burke clearly breaks from the mold of any specific literary critical tradition, it is likewise inaccurate to classify him under every critical approach. No one critic can cover all ground or use all terms, as Burke himself would acknowledge, especially since many current critical vocabularies were unavailable. However, many scholars have found Burke’s critical vocabulary compatible with current terminology. See, for instance, Phyllis M. Japp’s “‘Can This Marriage Be Saved?’: Reclaiming Burke for Feminist Scholarship” or Dustin Bradley Goltz’s “Perspective by Incongruity: Kenneth Burke and Queer Theory.”
3. This does not imply that Burke believes writers are always unaware of the broader implications of their symbols, though Burke would argue that certain critical vocabularies are better suited to drawing out these implications, what Burke would call their use.
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Veneciano, Jorge