Shit-stirring provocation (was Women Crime Writers)

Fri Jan 1 15:26:42 CST 2016

You are right, Mark. Ten minutes after posting that mail the same thought
occurred to me. I would never have looked up the Kafka quote otherwise.

Happy New Year!

2016-01-01 22:20 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> Re the new year resolution.
>
> I'd rather be corrected and criticized, directly or indirectly. Brings
> more and more interesting posts onto the
> Pynchon List than mine alone.
>
> Happy New Year!
>
>
>
> On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 4:02 PM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Thanks, Jochen. Now it is better known and exact.
> >
> >
> >
> > On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 2:03 PM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >> Something I hate: when authors I (we?) adore are quoted with something
> they
> >> have not said. Last example here:
> >>
> >> Kafka, "A book should crack the frozen ice within us". (or it isn't
> >> worth reading, goes the unsaid).
> >>
> >> What did make me suspicious was "the frozen ice", something I didn't
> think
> >> Kafka being capable of writing, even in a letter.
> >>
> >> What he did write, actually, was this:
> >>
> >> »ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns.«
> >>
> >> Okay, something is always lost in translation, even when the person
> >> responsible knows a little bit of the language (s)he's translating
> from, but
> >> it should be rather something like this:
> >>
> >> ... a book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
> >>
> >> That's quite a difference, isn't it?
> >>
> >> Would it not be a good resolution for the quite new year: only quote
> >> something somebody has possibly written after a minimum of research?
> >>
> >> (And yes, I think that even includes the difference between "'kinship'"
> and
> >> "kinships".)
> >>
> >>
> >> 2016-01-01 19:21 GMT+01:00 Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>:
> >>>
> >>> I've just finished bingeing all nine episodes of the BBC Sherlock
> (second
> >>> time through) in preparation for tonight's retro episode... which had
> me
> >>> reflecting on the pleasures of "aha, now I see how it all fits
> together,"
> >>> the central reward of detective/mystery fiction since Poe and Conan
> Doyle
> >>> invented the genre.
> >>>
> >>> Much of Wilson's objection -- especially to Agatha Christie -- centers
> on
> >>> the revelation-as-lecture: Holmes slowly retraces his lightning
> deductions
> >>> for stolid Watson's benefit. Poirot gathers all the parties in the
> drawing
> >>> room to offer multiple readings of events so far, pirouetting around
> each
> >>> suspect, culminating with the least likely: 'it was timid benign Cousin
> >>> Osbert all along!"
> >>>
> >>> Wilson deprecates that pleasure as a minor if not childish
> gratification
> >>> -- a rhetorical stance parallel to that of Wood's structures on
> Pynchon I
> >>> cited recently. We're supposed to absorb our soul-nourishing
> understanding
> >>> slowly, gradually, via small revelations and low-key epiphanies. not
> in a
> >>> junk-foody burst that rearranges everything at once. And that
> understanding
> >>> should be primarily understanding of character -- psychological
> >>> verisimilitude, relationships, human nature,
> >>> family-friendship-romance-marriage -- rather than on the cheap,
> brightly
> >>> colored Lego of whodunnit plot.
> >>>
> >>> AFAIC, storytelling preceded, and underlies, and has its values and
> >>> virtues quite independent of, all the magnificent things done with long
> >>> prose fiction since the 17th century, with Austenite-Flaubertian
> realism
> >>> since the 19th. As it happens, I *like* spinach,, and eat it often.
> But I
> >>> still say to hell with it when served a la Wilson or Wood or Forster,
> in an
> >>> implicitly or explicitly prescriptive scheme for The Only Proper Aim of
> >>> Fiction.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> On Fri, Jan 1, 2016 at 8:37 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>>
> >>>> Kafka, "A book should crack the frozen ice within us". (or it isn't
> >>>> worth reading, goes the unsaid).
> >>>>
> >>>> Edmund Wilson wrote "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" [famous
> >>>> Christie mystery; look it up if spoilers do not bother you.) In Which
> >>>> he argued that no mystery could come close
> >>>> to being Literature because, in having to resolve the mystery, the
> >>>> murder, no work could
> >>>> REALLY build to resonant themes, could not overarch and subsume the
> >>>> greatest themes for a powerful work of art.
> >>>> (just think of GR, for one example of an overarching (ouch, pun not
> >>>> intended but...) theme of a book full of deep themes which builds to
> >>>> that ending which contains the beginning and so much more).
> >>>>
> >>>> Other Side: Crime, murder, is such an overarching (sorry. I like the
> >>>> word. Stop reading if you don't) theme and natural metaphor of the
> >>>> 20th and 21st Centuries that the best 'mysteries', crime novels can
> >>>> embody themes naturally that lift them about your average 'literary'
> >>>> novel if done right, the best, etc.
> >>>>
> >>>> Even though I am reading Hammet's Red Harvest today because I haven't
> >>>> and because of one Plister's long-ago urging, I have sided with Wilson
> >>>> most of my life (even when I read some crime writers steadily.)
> >>>>
> >>>> But Wilson was wrong on Kafka--"second-rate, wouldn't last".
> [paraphrase]
> >>>>
> >>>> And yes, of course, we can relax with a mystery even if we believe
> >>>> Wilson, but that is not why I do (nor hope you who engage argue.) I
> >>>> feel like I'm slumming; refurbishing my lucky privilege.
> >>>>
> >>>> Take it on.
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> On Thu, Dec 31, 2015 at 11:40 AM, Becky Lindroos <bekker2 at icloud.com>
> >>>> wrote:
> >>>> > Wow - thanks Ish - I’ve read both books - "Gone Girl" and "Girl on
> the
> >>>> > Train" (and Woman in White for that matter).  I can’t really say
> which I
> >>>> > enjoyed more -  "Gone Girl" is more twisty and surprising while
> "Girl on the
> >>>> > Train” is more literary (I suppose - more interesting structure and
> >>>> > character development,  great atmosphere,  what the reviewer said.)
> >>>> >
> >>>> > I’ve read other crime fiction focusing on women’s domestic scenes
> and
> >>>> > issues -   "Elizabeth is Missing” by Emma Healey  was pretty good
> this past
> >>>> > year (dementia)  as well as "Big, Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty
> from last
> >>>> > year.  There are others - “Trespass” by Rose Tremain might fit this
> >>>> > category.  The crimes are a bit different, the motives are
> different - I
> >>>> > enjoy the well written ones,  not those written for the sensational
> impact.
> >>>> >
> >>>> > The author is totally right about the True Crime genre (real life)
> >>>> > influencing the fiction (just to add to that thread).
> >>>> >
> >>>> > Bek
> >>>> >
> >>>> >
> >>>> >
> >>>> >> On Dec 30, 2015, at 4:53 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >>
> http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/29/crime-fiction-gone-girl-on-the-train-2015
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> On Tue, Dec 29, 2015 at 5:57 AM, ish mailian <ishmailian at gmail.com
> >
> >>>> >> wrote:
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >>
> https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1099-_women-crime-writers_-dolores-hitchens-resurgence-continues-with-four-new-e-books
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >>
> https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/1097-loas-_women-crime-writers_-goes-to-the-movies-with-week-long-new-york-city-series
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >> http://blog.loa.org/2015/08/sarah-weinman-women-crime-writers.html
> >>>> >>
> >>>> >
> >>>> > -
> >>>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >>>> -
> >>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
> >>>
> >>>
> >>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160101/38ef41f1/attachment.html>