runs brown 29

[cfalbert]

Gleaned from my PF prep......

Dostoevsky tossed SIX drafts of The Idiot and complained that the final was
a failure.....

love,
cfa
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Terrance" <lycidas2 at earthlink.net>
Cc: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Sent: Wednesday, June 25, 2003 1:07 PM
Subject: Re: runs brown 29


>
> > > I don't think VN said that.
> >
> > "Incidentally, I use the word READER very loosely. Curiously enough, one
> > cannot READ a book: one can only reread it.
>
> Not the same as all reading is rereading. Or all reading is writing.
>
> Writing is as close as we get to keeping a hold on the
> thousand and one things-childhood, certainties, cities,
> doubts, dreams, instants, phrases, parents, loves-that go on
> slipping, like sand, through our fingers. I have tried to
> learn the lesson of the midget drummer. And one more, which
> I got from that other immense work, Dog Years: When you've
> done it once, start all over and do it better."
>
>    --Salman Rushdie, Introduction to "Gunter Grass On Writing
>       And Politics 1967-1983"
>
>
> Rushdie is alluding to the first, second, and third drafts
>   of The Tin Drum, which Grass fed to the furnace.
>
> Extrapolating from Rushdie's comments and the story of Grass
>   in the furnace room writing and rewriting, we might consider
>   what I like to call Thomas Mann's Problem,  he asks
>   that we read his books twice.