Marcus vs. Franzen
tony antoniadis
tony.antoniadis at gmail.com
Mon Oct 3 10:41:40 CDT 2005
agreed, wondering if this deflates the arguments he raised any,
though? my suspicion is no, although the redundancies in the essay
might have discouraged readers from finishing it...
On 10/3/05, rich <richard.romeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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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