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Jonathan Holden is a contributor to the minnesota review.
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Published Spring 2006
 
Holden on Fred Pfeil
Thanks for the opportunity to talk about John Frederick Pfeil.
I initially met him, I think, in 1975, when we hired him at Stephens
College. Fred's presence was, for me, salvational — to have
a colleague who was a brilliant writer and, in that women's college,
something of a macho man, a buddy. I recall that around that time
he published an award-winning short story, its title "The Quality
of Light in Maine." An exquisite story that revealed that Fred,
underneath his political ambitions, possessed a deep understanding
of Beauty — part of Fred, a part that he himself distrusted
and criticized as "decadent," was the sensibility of an aesthete.
But this contradiction was perhaps the most fundamental element
of Fred's being: Contradiction, fundamental to his Marxist worldview.
If I were to compare Fred to any recent writer, it would be to Bertolt
Brecht.
Goodman 2020 epitomized his work which, at its best, I
would characterize as "High Satire." Goodman is "science
fiction," which is "satire" (starting with Swift's Gulliver's
Travels). Fred was always a social critic, a keen one, and (in
my opinion) an intellectual genius. He will be missed by all of
us — a person to whom you could bring the most daunting intellectual
material, knowing that he would not only "get it" but be able to
teach it better than you could. Of all the qualities of light which
Fred possessed, perhaps the most significant was his major open-mindedness
and his serious interest in the world. Plus a matchless mind. |
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MR BOOKS
Critics at Work
ed. Jeffrey J. Williams.
Critics at Work offers a guided tour through the central, sometimes confusing and frequently controversial developments in contemporary literary and cultural criticism. The tour guides, however, are not distant observers but have been primary participants in those developments, and they report on theory, cultural studies, the literary canon, the recent focus on race, sexuality, and other identities, the state of the univerisity, and the role of the intellectual. Throughout, they consider the not always easy negotiation of politics and culture.
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