Becoming-Literary-Critic

Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Literature is part of his trilogy of books on Deleuze and the Arts, which also includes Deleuze on Cinema and Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts. 1 Indeed, these three books are but part of Bogue’s larger oeuvre on Deleuze, which consists of two other books 2 and numerous articles, making him one of the English-speaking world’s most prolific interpreters of the French philosopher. As with Deleuze on Cinema and Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts, Bogue addresses Deleuze on Literature to »specialists and nonspecialists alike« (S. 7). This strategy requires straddling a fine line between oversimplification and, especially in the case of Deleuze, reliance on a hermetic vocabulary unintelligible to all but the initiated. Unfortunately, Bogue is not always able to successfully negotiate between these two poles. Nevertheless, Bogue’s book contains much to recommend it to readers seeking a comprehensive overview of Deleuze’s writings on literature and the literary.

Deleuze on Literature fills a need for a compact summary, in English, of Deleuze’s varied considerations on literature. Until now, the only available treatment of this topic has been André Colombat’s Deleuze et la literature, published in 1990 before Deleuze’s final book on literature, the collection of essays Critique et clinique. 3 Until Bogue’s book, what has been available in English, have been scattered essays in various journals and anthologies and the collection Deleuze on Literature, which makes no claims of comprehensiveness. 4 This is a contrast to the amount of work available explicating Deleuze’s views on cinema, for example, and thus Deleuze on Literature is a welcome addition to the expanding literature on Deleuze.

The Writer as Physician

Bogue begins and ends Deleuze on Literature by referring to Deleuze’s characterization of the writer as a physician. In his work Nietzsche et la philosophie, Deleuze differentiated between interpretation and evaluation, according to Bogue, corresponding to »a symptomology and a semeiology« in Deleuze’s words (S. 10). This distinction informs Deleuze’s reading of the differences in Nietzsche’s works; while aphorisms are acts of interpretations, poems are acts of evaluation (cf. S. 14). Following his discussion of Deleuze and Nietzsche, Bogue proceeds to analyze Deleuze’s work on the Marquis de Sade and Leopold Ritter von Sacher-Masoch, categorizing them as »Nietzschean artist-physicians« in Deleuze’s sense (S. 15). This chapter thus evinces both Deleuze’s and Bogue’s willingness to look beyond canonical literature as an object of investigation.

Machines

Bogue’s next two chapters deal with Deleuze’s work on Proust and Kafka from the standpoint of the machine. ›Machine‹ is one of the seminal Deleuzean terms, and refers less to an industrial product as to a system of production, either concrete or abstract. In the case of Proust, Bogue shows how Deleuze identified four different types of signs: worldy signs, »the signs of social convention«, signs of love, sensual signs »of involuntary memory« and signs of art (S. 32–33). This emphasis on signs makes Proust into a semeiologist. Corresponding to the four types signs are four types of time, »two types of temps perdu« and »two types of temps retrouvé« (S. 52). These four time paradigms, in turn, are but the products of the Proustian machine. As Bogue notes, »The Recherche is a machine, a producer of truths« (S. 52).

The parallels to Kafka are thus obvious. If the machine that is Proust’s novel generates truth, then the machine of In der Strafkolonie generates truth, too, but in a very literal way. This ›writing machine,‹ however, is but part of the larger writing machine that Kafka’s works comprise and it is to Bogue’s credit that he does not dwell on In der Strafkolonie, but rather situates it within Kafka’s oeuvre as a whole, focusing particularly on the novels as the works »where the writing machine assumes its full functioning« (S. 78). Particularly clear is Bogue’s explication of the role machines play in the formation of lines and the cutting of flows (S. 63–65).

Minor Literature

Better known to most readers than his description of the writing machine in Kafka’s fiction, is Deleuze and Guattari’s famous declaration of Kafka as a writer of a minor literature, one at deliberate odds with the dominant strains of language. In Kafka’s case, his Prague upbringing, far from the centers of German language and literature, plays a pivotal role. Perhaps the highpoint of Deleuze on Literature is Bogue’s deconstruction of Deleuze and Guattari’s argument. Although he accepts their theorizing on the status and potentialities of minor literature, Bogue evinces how »it seems as if Deluze and Guattari are merely willing Kafka into being the writer they want him to be« (S. 114). Prefacing this statement, Bogue writes:

Kafka provides Deleuze and Guattari with provocation for their theorization and material for the elaboration of their concepts, but their aim is not primarily to formulate a definitive interpretation of his life and work. There is no doubt that their reading of Kafka’s diary entry on small literature is selective and unconcerned with such issues as Kafka’s state of mind or degree of artistic development in 1911. Nor is their treatment of Kafka’s style such as to convince one that Kafka consciously followed the line of linguistic experimentation suggested by Yiddish, that he purposely deterritorialized German or that he explicitly tied avantgarde stylistics to minority politics. (S. 113)

This is not to suggest that Deleuze and Guattari’s argument is without merit. Indeed, it can be productively applied to Kafka’s works, as has been done most recently by John Zilcosky. 5 Bogue’s service is to point out both the faults and merits in Deleuze and Guattari’s presentation of Kafka, allowing the reader a subtly differentiated view of the argument.

Kleist and the War Machine

The war machine, which plays a significant part in Deleuze and Guattari’s Mille Plateaux is a machine only in their sense, the gathering of nomadic warriors outside the State Apparatus, who, in their production of an alternate, minor and ›smooth‹ space pose a threat to the sedentary State with its ›striated‹ spatiality. Deleuze and Guattari settle upon the works of Heinrich von Kleist as paradigmatic examples of the war machine, particularly Penthesilea. As Bogue points out, Penthesilea is a well-chosen example for Deleuze and Guattari’s argument, since the war machine, like much of Deleuze’s thought, only exists in flux and through a process of becoming. Thus, in Penthesilea, »Achilles gives himself over to a process of becoming-woman, but Penthesilea is engaged in a process of becoming-animal« (S. 123). In this chapter, Bogue also discusses Deleuze’s collaboration with the Italian playwright Carmelo Bene. Bogue’s treatment of Bene results in his succinct and insightful explication of Deleuze’s views on a minor theater, that is, how literature can be adapted for the stage and be made minor.

A curious omission from the discussion of Kleist and the war machine, however, is Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In Mille Plateaux, Deleuze and Guattari repeatedly contrast Goethe negatively in light of Kleist’s work. For example, they state, »Tout l’oeuvre de Kleist est parcourue par une machine de guerre invoquée contre l’Etat, par une machine musicale invoquée contre la peinture ou le ›tableau‹. C’est curieux comme Goethe, et Hegel, ont la haine de cette nouvelle écriture«. 6 Several chapters later, they return to the subject, declaring »Lenz et Kleist affrontaient Goethe, génie grandiose, veritable homme d’Etat parmi tous les hommes de lettres«. 7 Finally, when discussing different types of space, they postulate »Pour le moment, il faudrait seulement dire qu’il y a deux sortes de voyage, qui se distinguent par le role respectif du point, de la ligne et de l’espace. Voyage-Goethe et voyage-Kleist?«. 8 In the above examples, Deleuze and Guattari are clearly thinking of such works as Wilhelms Meisters Lehrjahre and, perhaps, the Italienische Reise when they make this distinction between Kleist and Goethe. The distinction is less tenable when one considers more ›minor‹ Goethean masterpieces, such as the West-östlicher Divan and, even, Faust II. It would have been interesting to read Bogue’s analysis of this passage, which is of prime importance for the discussion of literature and space in Mille Plateaux.

Lawrence of Arabia

As I mentioned in the discussion of the first chapter of Deleuze on Literature, one of the nice points of the book is its discussion of lesser-known and analyzed literary figures, such as Bene. Bogue also devotes significant space to the expatiation of Deleuze’s essay on T. E. Lawrence from Critique et Clinique. This discussion is particularly useful, since the essay has been virtually ignored by critics, despite it being every bit as »brilliant« as Bogue claims (S. 166). 9 Bogue shows how Delueze’s reading of Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom is part of the larger project in Critique et Clinique, that of adumbrating the »visions and auditions,« of literature, the extra- and sublingual signs of language that are an important part of minor literature (cf. S. 163). It comes as no surprise, then, that the discussion of Lawrence leads to a discussion of Samuel Beckett’s television screenplays, emphasizing these nonlinguistic aspects of literature. Following this chapter, Bogue provides a succinct conclusion, ably summarizing his points in a few pages.

Conclusion

Ronald Bogue’s Deleuze on Literature provides a solid overview of the variety of Gilles Deleuze’s writing of literature, both his own and in collaboration with Félix Guattari. The book does, however, suffer from several omissions. One may argue with the omission of Goethe from Bogue’s discussion of Kleist. More troublesome is the author’s omission of certain definitions of key Deleuzean terms. For instance, though he repeatedly uses the word »deterritorialization«, nowhere does Bogue define it. This is not a problem for the reader well-versed in Deleuze’s works, but is likely one for the »nonspecialists« Bogues hopes to reach. Similarly, it is remarkable that Bogue would talk of processes folding and unfolding without referring to Deleuze’s book Le Pli (cf. S. 44). 10 These are relatively minor quibbles, however, and Bogue’s book can indeed be recommended to readers wishing to learn about one more aspect of the work of one of the past century’s most wide-ranging philosophers.