slaggin' Moore, Gaddis, Franzen and DeLillo pre-Nobel

[jbor]

Yes, Franzen's target is _J R_ rather than Steve Moore, towards whom he is
quite respectful. As I noted, Franzen doesn't "ridicule" Moore, and nor was
Moore "positive" about Franzen's article.

best



on 12/10/02 1:55 PM, s~Z at keithsz at concentric.net wrote:

>>>> And he wasn't exactly ridiculed either; Franzen referred to Steve as "a
> Gaddis scholar whose criticism is a model of clarity and intelligent
> advocacy". <<<
> 
> For those of you who have not read the essay, here's the above snip in full
> context:
> 
> "If you're having a good time with a novel, you're a dupe of the
> postindustrial System; if you still identify with characters, you need
> to retake Postmodernism 101. William Gass, in his introduction to "The
> Recognitions," names the childish thing that it's time to put behind us:
> "Too often we bring to literature the bias for 'realism' we were
> normally brought up with." Gass's defense of difficulty complements
> Tabbi's, but with greater sophistry and alliteration. "If the author
> works at his work," Gass writes, "the reader may also have to, whereas
> when a writer whiles away both time and words, the reader may relax and
> gently peruse." Gaddis's fiction could have used fewer friends like this
> and better enemies. Even Steven Moore, a Gaddis scholar whose criticism
> is a model of clarity and intelligent advocacy, lets his enthusiasm get
> the better of him. "J R," for Moore, is a "lean and economical" book,
> because its inferential, all-dialogue form forces readers to supply
> missing descriptions and information; the purpose of a novel being, I
> suppose, to capture and efficiently store data."