Today's debate question

[Perry Noid]

I am corn-fused by this proposition. And I also think there might be a
dividing line btwn academic reading of literature and those who read for
funzies. And there is also a diff btwn those looking for escape and those
who like to problem solve. I think Pynchon veers more to the problem
solving type of literature, along with Nab, Borges, Eco, the kind of stuff
I enjoy. But then again these books are not devoid of characters you can
identify with. And I like that too.

Just to be clear, does empathizing with a character imply identifying with
the character?

On Tuesday, December 22, 2015, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:

> Proposition: That reading by identification with a character condemns the
> reading to be second-rate most of the time. The major reason: it reduces
> the sensibility of the writer, whose sensibility is supposed to be richer
> than ours ( most of the time) but which at least is Other than ours....
>
> To ours. The vaunted empathy is crippled; the genius of observation and
> imagination is lost. The reading is ultimately solipsistic.
>
> Sent from my iPad-
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>
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