Dying public

[Richard Romeo]

>
><<... for someone who bristles at putting authors in boxes, so to speak,
>comparing any two things, and judging them, is rather a fruitless use of
>time.>>
>
>Really.  How does one go through life without comparison and judgement?  
>How
>would one recognize a face?  Know beauty?  Tell a dogfish from a shark?
--------
I grant you that, but how does M&D compare to The Counterlife--I could say 
comparing M&D to say, The Sot Weed Factor, or say Roth's Sabbath's Theater, 
with say Coover's Pinocchio in Venice or both of those writers fictionilized 
accounts of Nixon. Maybe you were only using the Counterlife as an example?


  It's not comparision and judgement on the
>merits I bristle at, rather vague and meaningless cataloging.  And more 
>than >that, the idea--which was, at least implicitly, yours--that if a book 
>or >writer falls outside the favored category, he is by that demerited, 
>other >considerations notwithstanding.
--------
Hey, that'd make me a rather big dolt--I tend towards those authors who have 
an affinity for the odd, grotesque, hallucinatory, and a decentralized, 
large cast.  My attraction is not toward the Roths or Bellows of this 
world--but that's only me.  I would argue that folks outside the realm of 
writers I enjoy, are not bad writers.  I respect Richard Powers and Philip 
Roth, but their obsessions and styles are not for me.  If I implied what you 
deride about categories, then my explanation wasn't a good one.
Rich
>

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