A sort of thesis

Sat Jan 16 12:38:00 CST 2016

Minorly relevant thing.

Just happened to be rereading the foreword to *Lolita *(the John Ray, Jr.,
Ph.D. part). He says: "[...]a great work of art is of course always
original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less
shocking surprise."

On Sat, Jan 16, 2016 at 11:50 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>
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