About not REALLY caring whether TRP got the Nobel. I spoke too soon.

[Mark Kohut]

Imagine when we were really young, discovering writers and reading. For
some, me, working in a bookstore and
superficially aware but overwhelmed with who to read.  I followed
interests, writers leading to writers, subjects.
But for say a 'modern' German writer,--not talking Mann, Kafka, even the
must-read Hesse of my time......that Boll
won a Nobel mattered to me. A discovery that spoke to me somehow, in some
ways.

I remember working in a bookstore in Pittsburgh when Solzhenitsyn
won.....could not keep him in stock and many were
not young who bought him. He sits unchecked out at my local university
library these days but he is there because of
that award and the tail end of anti-communism and I don't know why else.

Ben Jonson (and others) were more acclaimed than that actor-journeyman
writer Wm Shakespeare in their time.
Melville died a failure long before the Nobel. Hawthorne who had his
acclaimed bestseller railed against the sue Warners of
the publishing world.

I still (want to) believe that the best literature rises in History like
air bubbles from the Deep.


On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 12:06 PM, Johnny Marr <marrja at gmail.com> wrote:

> TRP doesn't need to win the Nobel for us to appreciate him more. It would
> broaden his readership, so great for his bank balance (hopefully he's
> living comfortably enough, the extra sales would provide a nest egg for his
> family as well as ensure comfortable winter years). I think he's already
> well known enough that anyone likely to love him will venture upon him at
> some stage, but the extra exposure wouldn't hurt.
>
>  It would be great for him to win, although we'd face an increase in glib
> dismissals from an unsympathetic readership who view him as a chore or as
> markedly inferior to Roth, McCarthy et al. But the iconoclast within most
> TRP readers might welcome his exclusion from such a stuffy self-appointed
> museum of literary good taste.
>
>
> On Sunday, January 24, 2016, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> I was just reading in (should I duck?) THE HERO WITH A THOUSAND FACES
>> about how the wisest angle actually resembles cruel indifference to people
>> who are not so privileged/burdened. Because it takes such a broader view of
>> events and accepts so much more tragedy as a given (inherent vice, so
>> forth). I'm mostly just playing devil's ad. I play both these parts
>> internally, so if you're gonna play one externally, I'll play the other.
>>
>> I want to think his work will be with us as long as--and in whatever
>> form--we need it to, and I don't see that need lessening in the near
>> future.
>>
>> On Jan 24, 2016, at 10:03 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Love the last line.....so we are as ambivalent as one of Pynchon's
>> ambiguous concepts?
>> One belief larger than any Academy I have is the belief in History's
>> Literary judgments ...eventually.
>>
>> There is a wonderful essay in harper's or The Atlantic about how
>> Shakespeare's rep grew over 400 years.
>> I want to believe that THAT will continue and that it will apply to
>> Pynchon.
>>
>> On Sun, Jan 24, 2016 at 10:41 AM, Steven Koteff <steviekoteff at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> I don't disagree on a fundamental level though at the same time I'm just
>>> as suspicious of that feeling. It's not that different from, say, someone
>>> considered more strictly a religious prophet: if you believe that someone
>>> is exposing/creating something true of and life affirming in the
>>> world...don't you want them to get as much attention as possible? If it's
>>> really something you believe in? I always think about how, if I belonged to
>>> a church and really believed in it, it would seem selfish, short-sighted,
>>> and negligent not to want everybody else to get saved. But then of course
>>> it only makes sense for YOUR True Prophet--when anybody else tries to
>>> thrust one on you, it seems evil. But then an awareness of this--and the
>>> suspicion of 1's own certainty--seems to be one of the uniquest and wisest
>>> aspects of the Pynchster. I don't know. But then maybe good needs
>>> proselytizers as much as evil does. Needs more consideration. I think for
>>> the near future any extra attention the world pays to TRP's work yields
>>> solid RoI. But I'm cautious about that belief's ability to move me to have
>>> a strong or proactive opinion about the somewhat arbitrary decisions of a
>>> board of powerful people on another continent.
>>>
>>> Plus, I dunno, after just spending seven years in--in some ways--the
>>> beating heart of The Academy (which I know is not the same as the Nobel
>>> committee) I gotta say I have slightly more romantic ideas of how TRP's
>>> stuff is best and most potently spread. Maybe, like any exchange of love or
>>> positive energy, it is best spread from one person to another, with great
>>> urgency. Maybe it is more meant for smuggling than crowning.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Jan 24, 2016, at 4:28 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> But I think I really do. Seeing how prizes create readers and big prizes
>>> create canons faster,
>>> I wrote this recently to non-Plist industry friends when I sent them
>>> Tore's piece for Engdahl and the Nobel
>>> words.
>>>
>>>
>>> _____________________________________________________________________________
>>> Have you browsed in a macro way in the fiction section of any library
>>> lately? . With your general knowledge of most of the writers who have been
>>> published to acclaim since you started reading? Everywhere, any country,
>>> even America, you will notice how libraries buy, maybe overbuy and
>>> keep---teachers choose them for study-- the Nobel winners much more in
>>> stock vs so many others from any country.
>>>
>>>
>>
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