Marcus vs. Franzen

[rich]

the article was way too long, IMHO--he could've made his points quicker and
w/o the redundancies
 he does defend Gaddis well
 rich

 On 10/2/05, tony antoniadis <tony.antoniadis at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Any thoughts on the Ben Marcus essay in Harper's? Some of the
> arguments and word choices were miraculous, i.e., Franzen's notion
> that characters must be "livestocked" in familiar pastures of setting
> and plot in order to reach as many hearts as possible. And Marcus's
> boldness and intelligence to admit that he was, indeed, jealous of
> Franzen's status as a pundit. I wasn't so fond of the sort of model
> he set up though, with franzen's fiction aimed at melting hearts, with
> experimental fiction aiming for minds. There are writers, in my
> estimation, who do both, notably TRP and Gary Lutz.
>
> The essay opened up some interesting questions, or at least, dusted
> the familair ones off a bit--do we ever write for an audience? Should
> we shoot for scale, i.e., aim to write the novel that will be the one
> book Joe Blow reads this year, or do we take the high road and write
> for
> a handful of arrogant nerds, then fade into obscurity? I think Donald
> Antrim is perhaps one of the few living writers who went for both,
> i.e., tried to write something fundamentally entertaining that also,
> of course, was utterly original and even cerebral. Of course, his
> notion of entertainment might be a bit different than Joe Blow's. But
> the guy got blurbed by Pynchon, Proulx, and Entertainment Weekly. How
> the fuck do you do that?
>
> Tony
>
>
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