NP but Nelson Algren

[Markekohut]

His fiction is not polemical, as I remember it, but I couldn't find overarching metaphors within it as modernism cued me to like. I believed a lot of the time then that realism was dead as Art..so 19th century. 

A friend who has read every Algren to whom I sent this--who does think The Man With a Golden Arm is a neglected great novel speaks of Algren's "sensibility" ....compassionate, alive to survival.....and staying a decent human being---or not. This friend who also has read Sol Yurick, which I sent around as in the tradition
Did not think Yurick had such a sensibility despite lotsa hands-on experience too...

Sent from my iPad

On Jan 7, 2013, at 3:13 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:

> Is grittiest reportage a way of saying that it has too obvious a viewpoint?  Writing that's too gratingly polemical (I just discarded an old novel I'd picked up secondhand, for that reason) is hard to take seriously.  But I'm also put off of reading any book whose reviews contain the phrase "well-crafted."  That, for me, implies a writer who writes well but has nothing to say.  Annie Proulx (OK, I haven't read her, I'm sure there are people here who love her, etc., etc.  But compare her bio to Algren's, for example)?  Writing that's subtle, shifting in mood and voice, and wryly observant can be a fucking bore if it doesn't have anything interesting (thematically, even) to say.  At least Algren's got a point of view, born of his own experiences.  Pynchon's not even on this Algren-Proulx spectrum, and, I guess, before I commit to reading a book (as if I have anything more worthwhile to do!), I want to make sure it rises above as well.
> 
> Laura
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: Markekohut 
> Sent: Jan 7, 2013 2:49 PM 
> To: "kelber at mindspring.com" 
> Cc: "pynchon-l at waste.org" 
> Subject: Re: NP but Nelson Algren 
> 
> I have read little of him mostly because I could not feel it as literature rather than the grittiest reportage. 
> My failure based on believing too much in high modernism ---among other failures of reading and experiential 
> Imagination. 
> 
> I want types of ambiguity just about always, it seems. 
> 
> Sent from my iPad
> 
> On Jan 7, 2013, at 2:09 PM, kelber at mindspring.com wrote:
> 
>> Thanks for this, Mark.  I've never read him, always suspecting he'd be too depressing - something I simply can't handle.  But maybe I'll give him a try.  He's got a bio that Kerouac would envy.
>> 
>> Laura
>> -----Original Message----- 
>> From: Markekohut 
>> Sent: Jan 7, 2013 1:06 PM 
>> To: pynchon -l 
>> Subject: NP but Nelson Algren 
>> 
>> In which P's first agent makes an appearance and the neglected writer who dealt with "preterites" in more realistic writing ( and experIence )we can believe. Nice piece. 
>>> 
>>> www.believermag.com/issues/201301#return1?read=article_asher 
>>> 
>>> Download the official Twitter app here
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Sent from my iPad
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20130108/1da70ef8/attachment.html>