Reasons to Re-Joyce

[Tom Beshear]

A lot of contemporary American fiction seems really timid and safe to me. I see a lot of craft -- line by line the novels on the National Book Award finalist list were impeccable -- but craft isn't everything. There needs to be a strong vision and at least a hint of wildness.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Markekohut 
  To: Bekah 
  Cc: Tom Beshear ; Bekah ; Pynchon Liste 
  Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2012 4:55 PM
  Subject: Re: Reasons to Re-Joyce


  A major meme of writers and book industry folk re fiction is that this year has been exceptional.
  THAT always makes me suspicious since Great is rare and too many Good have to be comfortably acceptable meaning derivative.


  so, I second Bekah although I would read Smith or both of these were it not for........

  Sent from my iPad

  On Dec 8, 2012, at 4:48 PM, Bekah <bekah0176 at sbcglobal.net> wrote:


    I've downloaded the sample of NW and enjoyed it but I don't know about 400+ pages of that. We'll see.   


    The reason I said I wasn't sure if I agreed with the essay is that these books seem to be "homages" of some sort to Joyce.  Ulysses was original in its mix of  scope, depth, structure, style and dense arcania.   The world since 1960 or so seems to agree that the book sets a high bar standard for literary value.  


    Zadie Smith did the homage gig with On Beauty (which I dearly loved),  but there was a freshness to that book which was totally independent of the link to Forster.  Understanding the connection to Howards End  gave another level, or depth of appreciation,  to those who recognized it,  but that wasn't necessary at all.  


    Otoh,  Chabon and some others (perhaps Smith this time) are walking in the shadow of the artist and if that aspect overwhelms the substance of their own tale,  their books  will disappear into that "middle-brow" portion of the literary spectrum and be out of publication in about 5 years. 


    Precious few authors ever attain the level of real artist and create something indelible in the minds of the critics/readers -  Gabriel Garcia Marquez is another one.   There are way too many authors who take advantage of his genius.  


    (This is NOT to say that anyone who uses stream of consciousness or a dot of post-colonial fantasy is standing in anyone's shadow - these devices alone have become standard fare.) 



    I've  heard good things about the Fountain book though and  might have to check that one out.  I'm NOT expecting a Joyce or a Marquez,  not even a DeLillo or a Heller - just a Fountain -  and  a good story well told.  


    just my untutored opinion - 
    Bekah





    On Dec 8, 2012, at 11:12 AM, Tom Beshear <tbeshear at att.net> wrote:


      Interesting piece. I couldn't get into NW -- Smith's language often obscured rather than clarified things, and I got tired of the slog. I liked Ben Fountain's novel a lot, tho' I'm not sure it'll last -- in 20 years readers will need an annotated version to make sense of it because it's so steeped in the culture of the mid oughts. Chabon's book is on my to-be-read pile. I like his work a lot, but it kind of defines contemporary middle brow lit, doesn't it, with all those ephemeral pop culture references?
       
      ----- Original Message -----
      From: Bekah
      To: Pynchon Liste
      Sent: Saturday, December 08, 2012 12:39 PM
      Subject: Reasons to Re-Joyce

      Interesting - I'm not sure I agree but … fwiw: 

      ESSAY
      Reasons to Re-Joyce
      By DARIN STRAUSS
      Published: December 7, 2012

      The information has gone wide, it’s a note pushed under every reader’s door: Literary fiction is in serious trouble. That’s the deal, The Huffington Post told us so. (You know articles that bewail the consensus even as they work to create it? Well, this HuffPo story had the title “The Death of Literary Fiction?” — and that question mark was only a prop from the “You still beat your wife?” store of weighted questions.) There have been other slights. Here’s how The Millions worded theirs: “The good ship    Literary Fiction has run aground.” And don’t get me started on David Shields’s 2010 he-man fiction-haters’ manifesto, “Reality Hunger.”

      <1209-Strauss-articleInline.jpg>
      Illustration by Stephen Doyle

      Now, it would be one thing if the naysayers were talking about a crash dive of sales figures. Sales figures carry the inarguability of math. But these people are talking about something a little more hazy. Remember, we’re living in the year of theAwardus Horribilis, the Pulitzer Debacle. The prize committee checked out every American novel on offer, shrugged and went galumphing offstage. That was, without a doubt, a verdict on quality.

      So things might look pretty bad. But to me, the scurrilousness has the pasty complexion of po-faced error. The worry, the criticism, feels tacky and fatuous. Just this season I happened to read, back to back to back, new and oddly similar masterpieces. And I mean, legitimate masterpieces. I think the naysaying misses not only the fact that this has been a wildly good book year but also the emergence of a new trend. It’s less a school or a movement than a clutch of writers who share a really unlikely pedigree: “Ulysses.”

      More at:   http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/09/books/review/reasons-to-re-joyce.html?_r=0






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