(np) John Buchan: Q becasue of Alice

[Ian Livingston]

Whenever I hear Sir Walter Scott's name (or read it) my mind goes
straight to the image of the half-sunk wreck Huck and Jim come across
on their way down the river. My image is, yes, of a boat run aground
in the shallows. That does not mean  I think Romanticism is stuck in
the shallows generally, only that old Sam Clemens left a pretty strong
image of a writer too fat for the passage he attempted to negotiate.
Scott's works incline to lovely prose and imagery, with a strong
heroic presence and "nobility", for whatever that word is worth, but,
in terms of real, social worth, they incline to entertainment value,
with little real heritage to pass along.

I'll have to read Buchan to learn more about his perspective on Scott.

On Sat, Nov 5, 2011 at 7:26 AM, Mark Kohut <markekohut at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Buchan wrote a lot about Sir Walter Scott. Great creator of Romance s....
> Buchan's fictions were Romantic at base.....
>
> Melville, Pynchon and others wrote, write, American Romance.
>
> Scott hasn't lasted. (Irving Howe wrote a good essay on why). He
> was one of the few who praised Austen, who has. her realism is
> still reality. (?)
>
> So Q, if Romance does not contain its own self-criticism and/or if
> Romance does not go deep---metaphysically deep; to historical
> origins deep; to deep social and historical satire---does it inevitably
> end up dated via shallowness?
>
>
> From: Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
> To: P-list <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Friday, November 4, 2011 8:20 PM
> Subject: (np) John Buchan
>
> ok, he's in the preface to Slow Learner, and everybody's seen the 39 Steps
>
> I was thinking of looking at some of his books.
> Pynchon said some are even better than 39 Steps.
> The guy was governor general of Canada!  I didn't know that.
>
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant