TRTR is Wm Gaddis a writer no one reads?

[Paul Mackin]

On 6/24/2011 11:56 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
> "Thackeray enjoyed portraying the [inherent?] vice of mankind rather than its
> virtues".....
>
> Seems Thackeray or his publisher purposely choose the subtitle of course, but
> cannot find quickly any
> sourced remarks about that .....was commented on by
> many early reponders......"yes, the subtitle expresses the problem with Mr.
> Thackeray's book,
> the lack of the ideal"...........
>
> Bet Gaddis read and liked it?

I read it too, about the time Gaddis would have.

I wish I could remember what I thought back then about  "the lack of the 
ideal" but I can't.

But I'm thankful today Thackeray preferred "the truth" to "the ideal."

You had to take truth where you found it.

If it wasn't in Reader's Digest or Time magazine, you went to 19th 
Century novels.

P



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> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Paul Mackin<mackin.paul at verizon.net>
> To: Mark Kohut<markekohut at yahoo.com>; pynchon-l at waste.org
> Sent: Fri, June 24, 2011 11:01:30 AM
> Subject: Re: TRTR is Wm Gaddis a writer no one reads?
>
> On 6/24/2011 10:23 AM, Mark Kohut wrote:
>> Re Chapter 7...p.247...
>>
>> "A novel without a hero would be distracting in the extreme"....
>>
>> the first time I read the phrase "a novel without a hero" was way back when I
>> learned that the
>> full published title of Vanity Fair was Vanity Fair: A Novel Without a Hero,
>> that satire of 19th Century British society
>> by that wicked social climber Becky Sharp...which it would be interesting to
>> know
>> WHY that subline was chosen but I would guess it is for some of the reasons
>> Gaddis outlines here.....
>>    most particularly so that readers would anticipate NOT identifying with Becky
>> or
>>
>> any character......since
>> readers do want to still....do you encounter as I do the many readers who will
>> say....."I did not like any of the
>> characters" as a way to say they did not like a book?........
>>    This page also has to be about The Recognitions, yes? and also involves some
>> of
>> the cutural myths about heroes
>> such as Lord Raglan explores in his book, The Hero, which I have not read but
>> learned of around the same time
>> as I did The Goden Bough and Eliot and his sources such as jessica Weston, et
>> al......................
>>
>>
> I thought the subtitle might have been reference to the fact the protagonist was
> a woman and therefore a heroine, not a hero.  Or rather an anti-heroine.  I
> don't know however if in Thackeray's day hero had yet become a substitute for
> protagonist.
>
>
>
> Valentine seems to to pretty much be talking nonsense.  Just feeling aggressive
> against Brown.
>
> As for identifying with the hero,  Doing so may help a reader enjoy a novel. 
> But a good substitute for identifying with the hero is merely having the
> recognition of some conflict the hero is experiencing that the reader has also
> experienced or can imagine as real.
>
> P
>