dfw ... nobel specks

[fuhrel at ccrouter.ccsn.nevada.edu]

     I hope Naipaul is also being considered, along with Fugard and 
     Gordimer.  Bob Fuhrel


______________________________ Reply Separator _________________________________
Subject: Re: dfw ... nobel specks
Author:   DAVID ALAN BUUCK <dbuuck at sfsu.edu> at SMTP-CCSN
Date:    5/20/97 11:05 AM


     
re: all this talk of nobels for trp.  i would be extremely surprised to 
see it happen anytime soon.  while the nobel committee is much less 
politicized than other lit prizes, there is definitely resistance to name 
another american (much less a white male one) for awhile.  toni morrison 
having just won and all.  Which is NOT to suggest that this is some PC 
degradation of the prize standards, it is not, for there certainly are 
deserving writers all over this planet worthy of the recognition (& $$). 
TRP wil probably have to wait.  Also, his invisibility could be a problem. 
Nobel almost didnt award BEckett in 69 cuz they were worried that he would 
decline (as he had other awards), and after Sartre they didnt want that to 
happen again.  some (not all) names bandied about in recent years for the 
prize : Salman Rushdie, Gunther Grass, Milan Kundera, Joseph Skvorsky, 
Christa Wolf, Ngugi wa Thiongo, Chinua Achebe, Gyorgy Konrad, Pram. Toer, 
Mo Yan, Carlos Fuentes, Michel Tourier, Umberto Eco, Ishmael Kadore (sp?), 
and that's just fiction.  All worthy and brilliant and important writers.  
     
Now, DFW... well, first off, he's but what? 33? so judgement needs to be 
reserved I think.  on the whole, i would chime in with those who remark on 
his acute cleverness, which i think is ultimately a dtriment, or at least 
not sustaining.  some of his characters are more fleshed out?  maybe, so 
what, look at delillo's in ratner's star, or a number of other po-mo 
novels, the Concept of the Character as some Subjectivity deserving Depth 
has come under alot of scrutiny in po-mo fiction.  only in delillo's recent 
stufffor instance has he begun to really look at characters as more than 
tropes.  likewise auster, compare his early to late.  DFW has gone on 
record to state that he wishes to entertain, and is against any sort of 
avant-gardism that he finds elitist.  ok, fine, but i think that this helps 
us read him as what he is, a brilliant story-teller, tryin to figure out 
what it means to live and write about it these days.  the comparisons to 
trp are mainly publicist's wet dreams, and the industry (and critics'0 Wish 
to crown the next-big-thing, a new (great white male) hero to save the 
novel, after mailer and TRP.  and he gives interviews!!  whereas Delillo 
and others have gone on record claiming that TRP has set the standard for 
their generation, I dont know the IJ has for mine.  Time will tell, but I 
imagine that ours may no longer be the age of the Giant Big-Wad-Blow of 
Expression, which seems to be more of a modernist impulse. DFW is 
definitely a child of the first generation postmodernists such as barth, 
coover, trp, et al, and is battling with and against them, but clearly in 
their wake and tradition and Faith in the Big Book.  his sentences are most 
like Stanley Elkin on caffeine, his mode is mostly satire with efforts at 
warmth and something called "human emotion", which shows up for the first 
time in IJ, or at least in DFW's earlier work it seemed forced.  DFW knows 
everything, but i'm unsure if that's to his advantage, if there's something 
missing, it that strange, intuitive, unlearned, unstudied, "purity" of 
personal expression that somehow just manifests itself in any great 
writer's work (as style, concn, conceit, Form, ticks, whatever).  For those 
who still judge fiction in the US in terms of Size and Scope of Ambition, 
DFW is a major player in his generation, along with Vollman, Richard 
Powers, among others.  But i'm unsure that there might not be other ways to 
approach an understanding of m]what makes "great fiction." (more on this in 
another post...)  And of course, it can be a matter of taste.  I find Barth 
shallow and too-clever, and DFW in the same vein.  I prefer TRP and could 
probably "argue" that preference, but it may just be sensibility and no 
more.  DFW does have things to say, but seems (so far) to be interested in 
a very specific realm of experience, that is, contemporary "postmod" life 
as lived by middle-class, culturally educated, meta-ironic Americans.  
TRP's reach, needless to say, is much much wider, and thus has a greater 
grasp of things such as international capital, technology, culture clash, 
etc.  and History, or "history..."  But it shouldn't be surprising that DFW 
gets more "play" than someone like Vollman, who is looking at third world 
lumpen proles and the history of American/capitalist conquest.  seems 
america wants to read about their own vain inane joys, even if Ironically 
"critiqued" by a DFW, it's still "us" not them.  oh well...  IJ is 
important, but i think the only Big novel to rival M&D this decade (having 
admittedly not read Gaddis' Frolic) would be Gass's The Tunnel, which i 
fear is of such near-perfect pitch Evil that few will read it.  check it 
out, another Last WadBlow from a great white shark of High PostModernism, 
where the gesture is still modernist, i.e., big ggrand great , or in gass's 
words (he, like coover and hawkes, calls himself a modernist) :I wish to 
rise so high that when i shit i wont miss anyone/."  still a good book.  
TRP, while a writer of Size, seems more generous than this in his 
worldview, which is why he'll outlast barth and coover no doubt, and which 
is one thing DFW does have in common with him.  ok, more later perhaps...
     
t. bartleby jones