Wolfe

[David Morris]

>From: MalignD at aol.com

>style outpaces content.  As a result, after a novel or two, the writer runs 
>short of things to say.  This results in a fiction of involutions, fiction 
>about fiction, etc., the canon of modernism.  He argued against this and 
>for writers writing from a journalism model, going out and getting stories 
>and material and making their fiction of that.
SNIP
>The argument has merit, although it is patently simplistic and, not 
>accidentally, favors the approach Wolfe himself takes.  It is intended to 
>provoke and in that, it has proved successful.
SNIP
>I think it odd that it troubles you so that Wolfe operates out of a sense 
>of fun; one thinks of TP using Professor Corey as his proxy.  One can't 
>know for sure whether the reclusive Mr. P wore a smug smirk when he did 
>this.

It's not the "fun" that annoys me, it's the patently simplistic 
arguments/social commentary he promotes, setting up so many straw dogs, all 
the while playing the utter sophisticate.  It seems he has an utter need to 
criticize or polemicize, and in the process he tramples over so much 
inherent subtlety.  I guess that's part of the nature of his method, which 
seems to require the insertion of HIMSELF as an implied, if not actual, 
character in all his "literature."

Bottom line?  I guess it's just not my cup of tea.

And then we have to see him on so many covers in that damned white suit...

skirkingly,
DM
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