Kesey

[Cal McInvale]

The steely-eyed trout from Oregon responds with barbed fins:

>Cal McInvale puts Steelhead in his place:

No, no: I would not even venture to guess where that might be, pal.


[The rest of my original post deleted for the sake of brevity]


>Frankly, I don't read much criticism myself. I know I should. I feel deeply
>impoverished intellectually without it.  And, no doubt, the interpretive
>theories of, how did you put it, "even the dullest freshman lit teacher"
>would be a salutory corrective for my misguided readings of horribly
>received books like Notion (1964).

You got one awfully big chip on your shoulder, don't you? What happened:
get a bad grade in some 200-level lit course & now you're going to take it
out on the world? Listen, wise-guy: picking on criticism is as tired and
old as much of your dusty reasoning. Your self-important statement about
how much criticism you read only shows me how ignorant you actually are:
you may not agree with the opinions of many critics (I myself do not find
much in common with them), but to dismiss criticism itself is the act of an
insecure mind.

I may have made a mistake in believing Notion was Kesey's first book, but
I'm adult enough to admit it. You appoint yourself -- with your years of
accumulated wisdom, wide breadth of knowledge & wonderful intellect -- to
compose some list of important books done since 1950, then populate said
list with sheer crap like Neuromancer. That you would even attempt some
sort of "top 30" list of books is good evidence of a shallow approach to
literature.

>Don't get me wrong. I don't want you or anyone else moving into Oregon.
>We're horrible xenophobes here. A-and we all carry guns-concealed ones.

Grow up, would you?

>But are you really
>saying that living in the South doesn't add a new depth to Faulkner or
>O'Connor? Or that having some familiarity with the culture, politics, and
>ecology of Northern California doesn't add an extra dimension to Vineland?

I am indeed asserting this. I'm from the South but did not fully appreciate
Faulkner until I met a professor at the University of New Mexico who is an
excellent teacher of literature. Through his critical insights (there's
that word again) I grew to appreciate Faulkner more. Get this: the
professor is not from the South, has never lived in the South, and has only
passed through the South once! He also teaches Latino lit to white students
(gasp!) who understand it and appreciate it as much as any of his other
non-white students. I'm sure you are aghast at the notion. (Vineland, by
the way, seems to use NoCal as a macrocosm [or is that microcosm?] for all
of America.)

Now, I would be a fool to believe that there is not some connection between
your life and the things you read. For example, I will forever think of
this guy I knew back home in relation to Quentin Compson, because my
acquaintance obsessively consulted his pocket watch. But he ended up at
Princeton, where he did not kill himself. But that is literature enhancing
your life, not vice versa.

>That poststructualist notions of Hyperreality and the verbose blather of
>literary critics are to be the sole arbiters of "good" literature?

Nope. Nor would I assert that your blather is worth much.

>I never said Notion was better (whatever that means) than Cuckoos Nest.

Ah, but you did, simply by putting one -- and not the other -- on your Holy
List.

>And I'm glad to see the Art of Chivalry hasn't expired--I thought Andrea
>Dworkin and Catherine McKinnon had killed it off long ago.

Ha! I knew it was coming. You've shown your true colors now. Taking on such
easy targets as those two. What will you do next -- take candy from a baby?
(And another thing: you're one helluva name dropper, Steely.)

>By the way. We put Kesey up the last time he did a reading here in
>Stumptown for his wonderful new book _Last Go Round_ about the Pendleton
>Rodeo. Kesey said then that he'd never top the feeling he had after
>completing Notion.  For what that's worth, which, admittedly, isn't very
>much.

So then you're agreeing with what I said, that Notion is closest to his
heart? You know who Janus is?


Cal McInvale       e-mail:  godot at wolfe.net
WWW: http://www.wolfe.com/~godot/index.html
--------------
What is most appealing about young folks, after all, is the changes, not
the still photographs of finished character but the movie, the soul in
flux.  -- Thomas Pynchon