Unending Conversations: New Writings By and About Kenneth Burke.

• Author: Crable, Bryan
• Position: Book Reviews

Unending Conversations: New Writings By and About Kenneth Burke. Edited by Greig Henderson and David Gratis Williams. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001; pp. 272. $50.00; paper $20.00.

One might say that scholars in rhetorical studies have been promised Unending Conversations: New Writings By and About Kenneth Burke for over fifty years. This collection of essays, edited by Greig Henderson and David Gratis Williams, warrants such description because--in addition to new articles by Burkean scholars--it features previously unpublished material from Burke himself, including sections from his longawaited volume, A Symbolic of Motives. Drawing upon Burke's unpublished manuscripts, correspondence, and published writings, this collection offers a unique mix of theoretical and personal insight into the man, Kenneth Burke. There is much to recommend in this approach, and the hook is, on the whole, quite valuable for those working in Burkean studies. While the ensemble nature of Henderson and Williams' project makes overall assessment difficult--and creates its own dilemmas--the remainder of this review summarizes what I take to be the outstanding features and flaws of this text.

The first section, "Dialectics of Expression, Communication, and Transcendence," contains useful essays by Williams and William Reuckert that frame Burke's unpublished writings. Williams' opening essay is an exceedingly well-documented and researched examination of Burke's struggles to develop the conclusion to A Grammar and A Rhetoric of Motives. While A Symbolic of Motives was never published, his efforts ultimately produced two manuscripts, both of which deal with poetics: "Poetics, Dramatistically Considered," and "A Symbolic of Motives" (pp. 13, 99-104). Based upon available evidence, it appears that Burke wrote the "Poetics" manuscript directly after his work on the Rhetoric, but, dissatisfied with it, rewrote it, resulting in the unfinished "Symbolic" manuscript (pp. 15-18, 113-15). Williams' essay traces the history of Burke's "Poetics," and offers detailed commentary of both the sections that were spun into published articles in the 1950s and those making their first appearance in print (pp. 21-31). This careful exploration of the "Poetics" manuscript is complemented by Reuckert's essay, which focuses primarily on Burke's abandoned "Symbolic." The most helpful section of his essay offers, like Williams, a reconstruction of and commentary upon the...