Slate on Joyce and the Current State of Fiction

[Otto]

"You and I were initiated, directly or indirectly, by a generation of
writers for whom formal innovation was the starting point. (.) But what did
I actually learn-from Barthelme or Pynchon, or for that matter Beckett or
Raymond Queneau, or for that matter Joyce or André Breton? That writing has
infinite possibilities, yes; but not all of them are equally worth
exercising. (.) Perhaps the problem is this: We were taught, all too
readily, to think of literature as progressing within the context of
historical forces. Joyce leads to Beckett, Borges leads to Barth, Pynchon
begets DeLillo, and so on. But of course, things don't work like that. You
can tell the story that way, and it'll make some sense, but not for long." -
Jim Lewis


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Richard Romeo" <r.romeo at atlanticphilanthropies.org>
To: <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Cc: "David Hellman" <hellman at sfsu.edu>; "David Mitchum"
<dmitchum at paulweiss.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 9:00 PM
Subject: Slate on Joyce and the Current State of Fiction


Hi all-

I have to say I enjoyed this exchange between novelists Jim Lewis and
Jefrey Eugenides

http://slate.msn.com/id/2102446/entry/2102452/

Rich

----------

Me too, thanks for the hint.

Otto