A Tale of Two Fishes. - Review - book review

National Review, August 6, 2001 by Michael Potemra

How Milton Works, by Stanley Fish (Harvard, 616 pp., $35)

Trumpeted by its publisher as the author's "magnum opus" and "the definitive statement on Milton for our time," How Milton Works raises both very high and very low expectations. Literary scholars, remembering that it was Stanley Fish's 1967 book on Milton, Surprised by Sin, that catapulted him to the top of his profession, will expect a brilliant and sensitive exposition of Milton's works. Culture warriors, aware of Fish's prominence as a guru of postmodern subjectivism, will expect a tendentious reading of Milton in the service of the trendy ideologies that have done so much to subvert the life of the mind in recent years.

Happily-and sadly-the book satisfies both expectations. When Fish engages in close reading of the text, he does an excellent job of burrowing out nuances of thought and style in an illuminating way. He helps us read the poems as only a great critic can. But-and this is a problem throughout-he imports far too much of his own ideology into Milton, which makes the book frustrating for those whose chief interest is Milton and not Fish.

It's clear that Fish understands both Milton himself and how his poetry "works." His explication of one passage in Paradise Lost will serve as an example. In Book V (lines 658-665), Satan has just seen the Son of God honored in Heaven-and Satan has "thought himself impair'd."

[Look at] the pointed ambiguity of "thought himself impair'd." On the one hand, this has the obvious meaning that in Satan's view he has been impaired-made less than he was-by the honoring of the Son; but it also bears the even more pertinent meaning that, in so thinking, he has impaired himself: i.e., he thought himself into a state of impairment by thinking himself impaired; he made himself less by his thoughts.

Satan has created his new reality by thinking it into existence. It's a sharp observation, and such examples of Fish's acuity could be multiplied at length. This example also illustrates Fish's intention to show how Milton works "from the inside out." "The priority of the inside over the outside," Fish writes, "is thematized obsessively in Milton's prose and poetry. . . . Truth and certainty are achieved not by moving from evidence gathered in discrete bits to general conclusions, but by putting in place general conclusions [inside the mind] in the light of which evidence [outside the mind] will then appear." First comes faith, then understanding. This is a traditional Christian concept, and Fish demonstrates how important it is in Milton's works.

But Fish takes the idea much further, turning it into an assertion not just of the radical uncertainty of all knowledge, but of faith itself as a form of mere willfulness. Uncertainty is a reality of life, facing anyone who wants to profess any religion with the need to make a "leap of faith." As Fish characterizes it, however, the act of faith is not like a man leaping into the dark-an act of blind trust-but like a man slamming his fist on a table: I declare that this is true, and now all the evidence will appear in the light of my declaration. Fish quotes one of God's speeches in Paradise Lost-"But Mercy first and last shall brightest shine" (III, 134)-and glosses it as follows: "It will shine, however, only if you believe in it-if by affirming God's nature, by conceiving well of him, you think yourself into a state of nonimpairment, and into a world everywhere informed by the grace that is answerable to your faith."

God's mercy will shine only if you believe in it. This is a good illustration of just how frustrating Fish's book can be. If one adds the words "on you" between the words "shine" and "only," the passage becomes an expression of a rather conventional sort of piety: God will be merciful to you if you believe in Him, a sentiment Milton himself would probably have approved. As it stands, however, the statement makes a much more radical claim: Your belief will bring God's mercy into existence; it will determine God's reality. This is the theological equivalent of a stage performance of Peter Pan, in which the audience is typically called upon to revive Tinker Bell by clapping.

Fish would leave an unsuspecting reader with the impression that Milton was a postmodernist avant la lettre. Early in the book, Fish defines modernity as a world in which knowledge is attainable only through "the most rigorous and impersonal methods" (his italics)-modern science. Postmodernity, therefore, could be a spiritually fulfilling attempt to transcend the impersonal. But the postmodern-as Fish conceives it and projects it back onto Milton-looks distinctly like a triumph of the will-to-power, not a subjection of the will in faith.

A good critic can surely be forgiven occasional flights of shaky philosophizing; hearing out a man's expression of his worldview is a small price to pay if he's also giving us memorable insights into great works of literature. But there comes a point at which the sheer volume of digression, self-indulgence, and academic faddishness threatens to submerge our innocent pleasure; this book reaches, and surpasses, that point. Fish says, for example, that Milton's work displays a Freudian death wish and castration anxiety. Elsewhere he describes the relationship between Samson and God in Samson Agonistes as "the ultimate form of male bonding." The book contains far too much of this, and it's more annoying coming from a critic of Fish's caliber than it would be from the standard lit-crit professor.