Wood on Current Fiction

[Richard Romeo]

Wood's argument reminded me of Robert Coover's idea that writers should
never create a novel or fiction that could be filmed. One could argue
that much of current fiction goes against that dictum.

Is a novel worse for ware if it can be easily replaced or easily
translated into another medium?
Interesting question in my mind

rich



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
Behalf Of Malignd
Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2004 9:53 AM
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Wood on Current Fiction

<<Part of my anxiety and unease about novels by Foster
Wallace, Franzen, and others is that they have
swallowed a great deal of journalism, sociology, and
cultural studies, which means they are no longer doing
something that's not replaceable that another medium
can't do as well or better. . . . I am accused of
being too harsh, but the critic's job is to look at
the threats, the menaces to literature.>>

"Menaces" seems a little overwrought.  In any case, he
seems in this to be missing the aspect of context and
perspective.  The treatments of these topics will be
different when considered in the context of a novel,
where the strictures of scholarship and rules of
journalism are loosened and the topics treated more
subjectively.  Considered thus, the argument that
other mediums treat these topics "better" is far from
obvious.  It will depend entirely on the talent and
desired ends of the particular novelist.

This is not, however, to endorse the argument often
made here that Pynchon's novels or those of any other
writer can or should be read as journalism or
scholarship or history.  In that case the menace is
not to fiction but to rational thinking on those
topics.



	
		
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