Realism, Writing, Disfiguration: On Thomas Eakins and Stephen Crane by Michael Fried (review)

Shorter Book Reviews 115 Much of the domestic aspiration and energy, alas, fell victim to the adventure in Vietnam. And for his misguided determination in that adventure, the judgment of history will not be gentle. Nor will historians probably ever find much in the Johnson persona to be fond of. Even if Robert Caro's black portrait is not fully sustained, the vanity, ambition, insecurity, meanness and crudeness of the man show no signs of being eradicated by research in the archives of the Johnson years. Yet there is evidence in the pages of these volumes, and in their references to further archival possibilities, that despite the spots that will not disappear, better days may lie ahead for Johnson's historical reputation. Future research will need to take fuller account not of the theoretical possibilities, but of the possible alternatives within the existing political setting and institutional frameworks. It will need to assess the failures, at home and abroad, that were particularly Johnson's, those that were inherent in contemporary liberalism and internationalism, and the "failures" that perhaps have been redeemed by subsequent perspectives. By careful study of the work of some 135behind-the-scenes task forces assembled by Johnson and his colleagues, researchers will have to assess the degree to which his administration, despite its flaws, at least strove to come to grips with the agenda of contemporary society. These essays offer an invaluable map of a densely-wooded but rich terrain, the systematic exploration and charting of which have only begun. Thomas N. Guinsbw-g Department of History University of Western Ontario Michael Fried. Realism, Writing, Disfigu.ration: On Thornas Eakins and Stephen Crane. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. xv + 215 pp. Illus. Michael Fried's writings over the past ten years, especially those on Gustave Courbet, have insightfully analyzed the rupture within the realist tradition of painting between absorption and theatricality. Each mode of representation, in its own way, demands that the beh9lder of the painting enter into an intensified relationship with the scene depicted. Realism, Writing, Disfigurationrequires that its reader become absorbed by the ambulation of Fried's vivaciousintellect while also sending the beholder of his prose reeling in the face of the theatricality of the performance. In this work the critic becomes the artist or, better yet, he takes on the guise of man-thinking~aloud on the printed page. There is something sublime in the power of a critic 116 Shorter Book Reviews willing to allow his thoughts to go their own direction, but as with the Romantic conception of the Sublime, the heights of joy are paid for by the recoil of horror. Analysis in two lengthy essays rivets attention on Thomas Eakins's painting The Gross Clinic (1875) and a host of stories by Stephen Crane, including The Red Badge of Courage. The investigation holds together, thanks to Fried's dogged attempt to examine a thematics of writing in the painting and fiction of his respective artists. He is concerned with finding the materiality of writing inscribed, repressed and represented in Eakins's early canvases. When not psychologically reductionistic, (see Oedipal tensions resplendent in The Gross Clinic, Fried is occasionally brilliant in demonstrating, in formalist fashion, the ubiquity of the written word or scene of writing in the paintings. In the process, much that has been missed by other critics of Eakins's work is recovered, as when Fried considers the vertical plane of painting and the horizontal plane of writing as dialectically engaged in a variety of paintings by Eakins. In addition, Fried has much to say on the nature of realism and the absorptive aspects of Eakins's famous paintings of scullers. How is the materiality of writing also represented in the work of fiction, asks Fried? Through a close interrogation of many passages in Crane, Fried uncovers a fascination for, and repulsion towards, the experience of writing. Crane's common recourse to descriptions of disfiguration, to the effacement of certain characters, become metaphors for the frightening sublime of the blank page. The knife or snake as symbols of the phallus, a staple for consideration in the essay on Eakins, take on secondary import in the piece on Crane...