This post is a continuation of this series.
While my last posts on the 1940’s remarked on the blood and bombast necessary to communicate the experience of a World War, the 1980’s sound off a little differently. The first story of KR’s New Series in winter 1980 is Woody Allen‘s “The Shallowest Man,” which opens with a collection of Jewish men discussing hepatitus over sandwiches. The story– the big kick off to the Review’s revival– ends with the men arguing about the meaning of the narrative they’ve just recounted in a self referential, near-meta-fictional sort of way. “What’s the difference,” interrupts one man. “Who cares what the point of the story is, if it even has a point. It was an entertaining anecdote. Let’s order.”
And thus begins a new era for the Kenyon Review.
In 1981 Reagan took office, Italo Calvino was telling us for the first time what we were just about to do, David Ives informed us that “by the time I was eighteen, I was already becoming eloquent in my absences,” and Sharon Olds reminded us that “there is no end to the beauty of the body.”
In 1984, instead of raging in the throws of dystopia, America was learning what girls want and how they feel about it. Meanwhile, Robert Bly told us that “once I loved you only a few minutes a day,” Diane Ackerman pointed out that “to feed your art/ you sell bereavement and brass,” and Mary Oliver taught us that the spirit “shines from brute comfort/ like a stitch of lightning;/ and at night/ lights up the deep and wondrous/ drownings of the body/ like a star.”
In 1989, aside from one or two important births, SNL got a new cast member and this happened. At right about the same time, Robert Morgan told us that “those looking further into space/ and closer, find evidence of/ unseen matter everywhere,” and our own P.F. Kluge was just starting to tell us about his call from Jersey.
And imagine everything that happened in between. The 80’s, as it turns out, were sort of unexpected, but ultimately completely righteous. Keep a watchful eye out as Kate and Grant review the 90’s and 00’s, and then as we each pick our champions. Things might get a little heated…