GRGR

[Daniel Callahan]

I don't have anything against a group read, but I
posted a Q on M&D a week back, got one short but
helpful reply, and that was it.  That's understandable
when a) I really don't have a handle on how this list
operates, and b) everyone is head-first into the
topics orbiting GR.  Maybe all that's needed is a way
to catch us newbies up when we join the list (as in:
the recent history so far...)  All information being
in a context, of course--

As for GR:  Reading a bit of John Kevin Newman's work
on the classical epic tradition-- he mentions
Aristotle's dictum that history cannot be used as a
subject for epic literature because it doesn't allow
the author to reach his highest peak of poetic
achievement (Why?  History is too much fact for epic).
 The exception to this rule, of course, being when
history is old enough to have become myth.  Pynchon,
in our hyper-historicized age, seems to have
proactively made history into a mythic structure. 
Why?  Not to follow Aristotle's rule, I would say,
because Aristotle was not a conservative critic who
liked to make up rules.  He was an artist at
classification and criticism who followed the latest
trends and made bold statements, and Pynchon either
intentionally or coincidentally acknowledged that
Aristotle had a point.  And so we get a novel that has
one foot in history and another in his own
postmodernmyth.  

And since the P wasn't writing straight history,
there's no need to include every single damn event
and/or artocity that occured in WWII -- and therefore
no basis to criticize him on that point.  (Oy!)

Does Heller ever get this type of criticism?

Daniel.

=====
"Any man who would prefer great wealth or power to love, the love of friends, is sick to the core of his soul."
- Euripides

Daniel's homepage:
http://www.geocities.com/shada71/

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