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Title: Feast of Strangers: Selected Prose and Poetry of Reuel Denney (Contributions in American Studies) by Reuel Denney, Tony Quagliano ISBN: 0-313-30085-2 Publisher: Greenwood Press Pub. Date: 30 May, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $85.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Feast of Strangers
Comment: Quagliano, Tony, Ed. (1999). Feast of Strangers: Selected Prose and Poetry of Reuel Denney. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press.
Editor Tony Quagliano has put together a wonderful tribute to his friend Reuel Denney (1913-1995). Social analyst, poet, man of letters, Denney left us a body of work filled with imaginative insights. His 1957 collection of essays, The Astonished Muse (recently reissued with a new introduction) remains, to my mind, a modern-day landmark among the writings on popular culture. Denney's powerful intellectual stamp also is to be found throughout the best selling sociological treatise of all time, The Lonely Crowd, written with long-time and more well-known sidekick David Riesman.
Mr. Quagliano's book is well-conceived and organized. The way in which Denney's life and work are brought together is a case study in constructing a sociology of knowledge and a fine example of what can be learned from studying the intersections between autobiography and social analysis--analysis both in prose and poetic form. (In rereading some of Denney's poetry, I have rediscovered and highly recommend his In Praise of Adam.) Quagliano has masterfully used Denney's own recollections and examination of different periods of his life as a framework for providing us with examples of his writings representative of each period.
The title of the book is taken from a 1979 Denney article examining the varieties of social experience in America. Mr.Quagliano's book is indeed a feast and I highly recommend it to all who want a more complete understanding of the major social currents from the Great Depression to the close of the 20th century and a Renaissance--like mind which both felt their effects and shaped them. For those of us who studied under Reuel and who continue to admire and draw upon his work, it can only be hoped that Mr. Quagliano's celebration of the life and work of Denney is only the beginning of more writing in this vein.
Randle W. Nelsen, Author of Miseducating: Death of the Sensible (1991) and Editor and Author of Inside Canadian Universities: Another Day at the Plant (1997)
Rating: 5
Summary: HONOLULU ADVERSISER review -- October 30, 1999
Comment: Reuel Denney's View: FEAST OF STRANGERS Collects Works of Essayist, Poet (a review appearing in the HONOLULU ADVERTISER on October 30, 1999)
FEAST OF STRANGERS: SELECTED PROSE AND POETRY OF REUEL DENNEY. Edited by Tony Quagliano. Greenwood Press, hardcover, $55.
When Reuel Denney passed away in 1995, the University of Hawai'i community lost one of its best minds and finest writers. Social scientist, poet, and literary essayist Denney is probably best known as a co-author, along with David Riesman and Nathan Glazer, of THE LONELY CROWD: A STUDY OF THE CHANGING AMERICAN CHARACTER, but that most famous of books about the personality of America represents only one facet of Denney's work. FEAST OF STRANGERS, a collection of Denney's writings edited by Tony Quagliano and recently published by Greenwood Press, reveals the remarkable range and depth of Denney's speculations. Those who encountered the penetrating mind and affable disposition of Reuel Denney during his years as a professor and scholar at the University of Chicago, the University of Hawai'i, or the East-West Center can testify that Denney was remarkably gifted as a teacher and as a life-long inquiring spirit.
In Denney's work eloquence is always beautifully instrumental to insight. He demonstrates that refined ideas can be most fully captured in finely rendered interweavings of words. For instance, in an important 1945 article for FORTUNE on the implications of a crucial international economic conference Denney carefully considers the economic issues while developing a sequence of wonderfully witty wordplays involving the forested names of the meeting places--Bretton Woods and Dumbarton Oaks. Denney's wit in such cases is more than entertainment; his playful way with language serves to accelerate the reader's insight. Few writers could achieve even once the fusion of delight and instruction that is characteristic of all Denney's essays.
The essays here give us Denney's take on such topics as the leisure society, the crucial importance of club life in America, the nature of animal symbolism and its enduring importance as constantly reinvented myth, and the inevitable mixing of the fine arts with popular culture (and vice versa). Astute interpretative essays included here give us Denney's views on the works and careers of such fellow poets as William Carlos Williams, W. S. Merwin, and Gary Snyder. There is also a fascinating account of the lectures artist Jean Charlot gave to artists employed by the Disney Studios.
Fans of Denney's work relish the beauty of his writing in all genres, but it is in his poetry that the lyricism of his voice is most fully available. FEAST OF STRANGERS features poems from Denney's several volumes of verse, including CONNECTICUT RIVERS, the collection that won the Yale Younger Poet's Award in 1939. Among the best pieces here are the widely anthologized poems "A Wine for Li Po's Picture" and "The Laboratory Midnight." The latter aptly articulates the exquisite intellectual designs that great science can achieve:
And if you are unpanicked, tell me what you find On how the sun flies and the snow is spent, What blasts and bessemers we live in, that dissolve All the loam loaned to spine and ligament.
Among the most intriguing pieces in this volume are the memoir excerpts from Denney's early years, which tell tales of long ago Brooklyn and Buffalo. These pieces so deftly suggest the people of Denney's childhood that one finds oneself wishing that Denney had found time in his over-full life to write novels. Denney's accounts of his Irish immigrant grandparents in the days just before World War I are his most delightful characterizations. One wishes to hear more about the grandfather, thwarted in his hopes that he might become the proprietor of a country farm in a romantically imagined rural nook, and about his wife and nemesis whose urban preferences and practicality stand in the way of his "country-estate" schemes.
The memoirs of Denney's adult years give us glimpses into the intellectual life of America during his span of years. Denney had a gift for friendship and knew many of the major figures of his time.
When one finishes FEAST OF STRANGERS one wishes for more of everything, and it is likely that there will be future publications of separate volumes of Denney's poems, essays, and memoirs; but for now this compendium of Denney's several voices provides us with a wonderfully satisfying introduction to his invaluable and entertaining writings.
Joseph Stanton
In all of Denney's essays, the eloquence of the writing is instrumental to the insights of
He was an intellectual of the first order.
Beauty of expression and intellectual distinction go hand and hand in the world of Denney's writing.
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