We all need to answer

[Mark Kohut]

BUT, where will I stand? ......Will this ledge I'm clinging to, hold? .....refreshing--which it so wonderfully is--can be another word for nothing left to be wrong? 

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> On Nov 11, 2015, at 6:13 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> MK> a lot of this IS about we readers and not the writers, yes?
> 
> IMO very nearly approximately closely asymptotically all of it  :-)  IMO, very little appeal there to extrinsic standards & criteria, which is refreshing
> 
> 
> 
>> On Wed, Nov 11, 2015 at 5:38 PM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 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
> 
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