A sort of thesis

Sat Jan 16 13:34:48 CST 2016

I've yet to read Finnegan's Wake, even a little. If it truly is greater
than Ulysses then I must stop procrastinating over it as Ulysses was a
life-changer in so many ways.

I think my great list would have to include Maturin's Melmoth the Wanderer.
(how does one do italics on Gmail and smartphone?!) It's some years since I
read it, but it stays with me.
I went through a couple of years where I read only the writers I'd heard of
as being great, and Charles Robert Maturin was one, along with the other
gothic 'names'.
I'm putting my head on the block, but I absolutely put Gene Wolfe, though
particularly the Solar Cycle, on my list of greats.
On 16 Jan 2016 18:39, "Steven Koteff" <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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