more marginalizing

[barbara100 at jps.net]

There was once a novel that changed my opinion on things.  However, you may be right in that it only brought to the surface what was already there.  I'd say more about it, but your comment on my 'endless soliloquy' makes me think you'd rather I didn't.  So I won't.


Original Message:
-----------------
From: Michel Ryckx michel.ryckx at freebel.net
Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 20:33:02 +0200
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: more marginalizing


barbara100 at jps.net wrote:

[snip]

> It's not a good critical position to have period.  Fiction, if it's any good
> at all, does and should instruct, teach and reveal.  Make of it what you
> will, but don't say it's not there for the taking.

Dear Barbara:

If I may intrude your endless soliloquy: does one read in order to have a
critical position?  I read because I like books.  And that's it.  I would not
know what that is, 'a critical position'  One may have, of course, an opinion.
If a novel teaches me something, it is usually that my own prejudices, of which
I'm trying to be aware of, are confirmed or not.

Imagine you are right: what would you learn from a very good writer like
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, who was a bitter man, antisemite, sympathising with the
Nazis?  A writer whose novels are one long scream, who writes about his hate
for humanity, only interrupted by three little points?  But what a style.  What
a literary tour de force.  I have completely forgotten the first part of Simone
de Beauvoir's autobiograpy, ma'am, called 'Mémoires d'une jeune fille dorée'.
Only her description of the reception of 'Voyage au bout de la Nuit' in the 30s
I remember: le tout Paris was dazzled.  And rightly so.

You may occasionally read fiction of which you think: 'Yes, that is it'.  But
did a novel ever change your opinion on something?  You think 'that is it'
because you already thought that way.  And somebody just found the right words.

Kind regards,

Michel
"naive European"



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