We all need to answer

[John Bailey]

I read it as high praise for Disgrace because no one can be absolutely
correct in their interpretation of the novel.

He doesn't go on to explain why such polyvalency is a yardstick truer
than others. He does make reference to our shared cultural upbringing
or something of the like - I think he's wrong there. His school of
reading is in a particular tradition that is far from the only one.
But of course it's a very influential one, and I think it's an
excellent one too! But not the only one.

On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> And yet he moved Coetzee into the everything can't be great column, no?
>
> And was he dissing Coetzee's Disgrace---or the readers who respond in one way?
>
> And, a lot of this IS about we readers and not the writers, yes?
>
> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 4:52 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Parks seems to favour a particular literature of omission and
>> understatement and ambiguity - his trilogy of Sebald, Coetzee and
>> Ginzburg suggest this. Those are three amazing writers but there are
>> lots of other praise-worthy authors who aren't going for the same
>> thing at all. Surely he'd roll his eyes at Pynchon, which is his
>> right.
>>
>> A bit confused by his dissing of so many authors as conniving
>> technicians carefully constructing their elaborate seductions. How are
>> the writers he likes any different? Are they just blessed by genius
>> rather than working at it?
>>
>> On Thu, Nov 12, 2015 at 4:10 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> his end position is also why I love group reads.
>>>
>>> And, re DISGRACE. I do not think the "moral equivalency" argument
>>> holds because the book is not an argument.
>>> We read the character in it not Coetzee too easily.
>>>
>>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 11:19 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> parks has been very interesting as he works out his full experience of
>>>> reading and critically. I have been strongly against
>>>> some aspects of his generalizing, yet find other aspects illuminating.
>>>>
>>>> yes to what Monte asks. I was going to ask the plist to riff on
>>>> 'plot-driven' vs. not but Parks goes there too. (ever since I
>>>> started trying to read 'the best that has been thought and
>>>> said'--Arnold and then (too) much avant fiction when young,
>>>> plot can hardly hold me. Language, prose riffs, insight and
>>>> complexification of notions and perspectives.
>>>>
>>>> We can start by discussing Parks here. From our coigns of vantage.
>>>>
>>>> First: What does he WANT, that is, think makes the best fiction?
>>>> Realism, even dense realism, seems not to do it
>>>> and too much effort on the page doesn't do it. I wonder what he thinks
>>>> of GR, for example, about which we will all
>>>> remember all those readers then and later--vidal, say--who said it
>>>> showed off its own prose...as he says of Neumann.
>>>>
>>>> anyway, talk amongst yourselves.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 9:04 AM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>> And to ask:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/nov/10/how-could-you-like-that-book/
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l