A sort of thesis

[Steven Koteff]

Good side discussion, then, might be: What are books you consider Great
despite, or maybe because of, being very small? (As if there aren't enough
short stories.)


On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 11:47 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Just reading over that. Should've edited that a lot. Sorry guys. Wrote it
> on a cell phone while walking around Wicker Park. I mean to say, by the
> way, I entertain the idea *Finnegans Wake *is Greater than *Ulysses*.
>
> I know a lot of people, by the way, who value nothing in the world above
> literature, and whose stomachs churn at discussions of Greatness that
> involve comparisons, hierarchies, etc.
>
> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 11:40 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I think there are probably very reasonable reasons why the size and scope
>> of a novel--if they don't dictate real vitality and life affirmation and
>> craft and greatness--might correlate with some like Greatness Frequency
>> Index. A billion caveats, most of which you can easily imagine and which I
>> grant.
>>
>> I started becoming a Pynchon devotee when I was in college. He was a
>> gradual progression on a reading arc of mine that lent me to ever (you
>> might call)excessive/(I might call)expansive novels. Preceding Pynchon for
>> me were, like, DFW (I am one of the people around here who thinks Infinite
>> Jest is Great but I haven't read it in like five years so who knows; and
>> I'd consider adding Pale King even in its published form, with its phantom
>> bits, to the list, like The Castle), Tolstoy (Karenina also big and Great),
>> Joyce (I have read only bits of it Mark but I at least entertain the idea
>> that it's Greater than Ulysses even if I don't necessarily agree; a smart
>> reader of Ulysses can reasonably read it smoothly enough or submit to it
>> enough that there is active real-time investment in the story and
>> characters that offers that magical/primitive pleasure of
>> self-transcendence by caring about an unreal world, to the point that you
>> forget you exist in a different one, or exist at all; I have read a few
>> bits of Finnegans Wake but not enough to know if that can be experienced in
>> FW; and if that pleasure is sacrificed, I'm not saying it can't be made up
>> for in the other Great things created by the same extremer density of FW
>> that allows for its other/Greater qualities; just that I haven't read
>> enough of FW to know if that's the case; fuck Ulysses is so good).
>>
>> I then went to grad school to study fiction writing at a program that was
>> basically three years of living in an arts colony that consisted of a lot
>> of very close but personally and interpersonally tumultuous people who
>> spent abnormal amounts of time discussing the art and practice of crafting
>> the perfect story. Often on a level that was so elemental, conceptual,
>> informed, sophisticated, and yet concerned with primality, that you
>> could've read it as spiritual. And from that perspective, the scope of
>> something like GR, it's wildness, excesses (on the level of language, size,
>> plot, etc.) are not only rebellious but also deeply connected to the
>> spirit/uality/philosophy/life-affirmativeness (as you might call it) of the
>> book that also makes it Great, I think. To the extent that the size and
>> scope are actually a part of the spirit and the Greatness. Now, I don't
>> think a book has to have a similar size and Scope to be Great. I think
>> what's more true is that the size and scope be perfectly attuned to the
>> particular requirements of the perspective the book is taking. Maybe when
>> spirit, craft, talent, and vision all combine to create something Great, it
>> even slightly more often requires a book huge in size.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> > On Jan 16, 2016, at 9:42 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > As I went on to say, size and scope matters in making my case...
>> >
>> > yeah, just a so what discussion to have.
>> >
>> > A feeling about Ambition of theme re all.
>> >
>> >
>> >> On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 10:35 AM, john bove <malignd at gmx.com> wrote:
>> >> In what way is Finnegans Wake greater than Ulysses or ATD than GR?  My
>> >> answer would be in no ways.
>> >>
>> >> I prefer Faustus to Magic Mountain and Dog Years to Tin Drum.  Bt so
>> what?
>> >>
>> >> And have you actually "read" Finnegans Wake?  NOt doubting, only
>> curious.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >> Sent: Saturday, January 16, 2016 at 6:13 AM
>> >> From: "Mark Kohut" <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> >> To: "pynchon -l" <pynchon-l at waste.org>
>> >> Subject: A sort of thesis
>> >> There are a few "big" books that have the status
>> >> of great novels that all cluster in my head in the same
>> >> place.
>> >>
>> >> Moby Dick, Ulysses, The Magic Mountain, The Man Without
>> >> Qualities, The Tin Drum, The Golden Notebook, Gravity's
>> >> Rainbow, Portrait of a Lady, Middlemarch, Cairo Trilogy, Radetzky March
>> >> and like that.
>> >> Swap out or add others, we can do.
>> >>
>> >> Proust in seven volumes is in a class by itself because of length.
>> >> (Some say first three volumes equivalent to the above bracketing?)
>> >>
>> >> But I think the two most ambitious novels in English, perhaps, the
>> only ones
>> >> I can think of this morning, that might be 'great' in even larger ways
>> >> than the above
>> >> are Finnegan's Wake and Against the Day.
>> >>
>> >> Argue with me. Find others?
>> >> -
>> >> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> >> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20160116/13783d9e/attachment.html>