Well I just reread Vineland and the news is still bad...

[Mark Kohut]

Here's a generalized flame from me about all this ranking: "singling up all the lines
  is agin, very agin, TRP's vision, as we know......
   
  That's what the ranking game is, imho.
   
  asbestos suit on,
  Mark

Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
    hey, all.....a simple logic game:
   
  1) if a writer writes more than one book
   
  2) if at least one book that that writer has written is judged great, his best.
   
  3) Then the others are lesser.
   
  As long as we are going to just rank, this is like riding that ferris wheel in Atd....
   
  Enuff,
  Mark

MalignD at aol.com wrote:
  
<<  I think it just happens sometimes.   An exceptional author pens an incredible fiction, his magnum opus,  and nothing he can do later will ever top it - or even be equal.   And yet he will write because that's what he does,  that's who he is. >>    I think this is entirely correct. You can't do "top this" forever.  Look at     Dylan.  He talks about his younger self like it's some other person.     Even statistically:  isn't there something called deviation from the mean   that suggests that one masterpiece is unlikely to be followed by something of   equal worth?  


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