Wolfe

[MalignD at aol.com]

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I wrote:

My memory of this is that it began with an essay in which Wolfe criticized 
the serious modern novel as it has come to be via the argument that most 
writers don't become writers out of a deep wealth of knowledge or topics, 
rather because they discover a talent for putting words together.  I.e., 
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.  His example, I recall was Zola.

The argument has merit, although it is patently simplistic and, not 
accidentally, favors the approach Wolfe himself takes.  (He mentions Richard 
Price favorably as well.)  It is intended to provoke and in that, it has 
proved successful.  Updike and Mailer each wrote a lengthy and huffy review 
of A Man in Full in which the book was categorized as non-literature.  
Mailer, of course, loves the theater of a public squabble as much as Wolfe; 
but it must have proved particularly pleasing to Wolfe to move the urbane 
Updike to drag himself out onto the stage.

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.