[Jan Devenish]

anti-memoirs by andre malraux

On 10 March 2016 at 17:55, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com> wrote:

> Speak, Memory?
>
> 2016-03-10 23:31 GMT+01:00 Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net>:
>
>> I do not read memoirs but I think the appetite for memoirs is closer to
>> the appetite that creates People magazine than any reaction to fabulist
>> fiction. I don’t accept that the bulk of fiction has followed the examples
>> she offers either. On the other hand I and many on the list who have this
>> interest in Pynchon, Marquez, Delillo etc. do feel a need to balance their
>> reading with heavy doses of  non-fiction. I also need poetry which is as
>> close as I get to memoir.  For me at least there is a tonic relation
>> between the various genres so I’m inclined to think there is something to
>> the general idea in the broadest sense, but I truly doubt that M Karr is
>> putting her finger on a meaningful phenomenon.
>>
>> There are probably some very good memoirs somewhere. Ya think?  I liked
>> Merton’s Seven Story Mountain.  I think that is the only memoirish book I
>> have read all the way through.
>> > On Mar 10, 2016, at 7:08 AM, John Bailey <sundayjb at gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > I suppose you could argue that Breaking Bad and Gilmore Girls and
>> > Bojack Horseman are directly responsible for a thirst for
>> > Kardashian-related television, too.
>> >
>> > On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 10:44 PM, Monte Davis <montedavis49 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >> Karr's is the kind of airy generalization that makes me want to go all
>> >> quant. Have those fabulist etc. categories actually increased as a
>> share of
>> >> novels published? Is there some per-reader sales tracking data to show
>> that
>> >> readers who tried those categories are now reading more memoirs? Is
>> there
>> >> any reason to think this argument -- ostensibly about the public world
>> of
>> >> books and readers -- is more than  a projection of Karr's preferences?
>> >>
>> >> On Thu, Mar 10, 2016 at 6:07 AM, Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>> >>>
>> >>> "Changes in  the novel have helped to jack up memoir's audience as
>> fiction
>> >>> grew more fabulist or dystopic or hyper intellectual under the sway
>> of Joyce
>> >>> and Woolf and Garcia Marquez and Pynchon acolytes, readers thirsty for
>> >>> reality began imbibing memoir."   ---Mary Karr, The Art of Memoir 2105
>> >>>
>> >>> Well, maybe, Mary, partly......
>> >>>
>> >>> But I, who along with readers and critics' 'lengthy assaults' on
>> memoir,
>> >>> such as by Wm Gass, Jonathon Yardley and James Wolcott will just add,
>> >>>
>> >>> Knausgaard and Ferrante have been hugely read as novelists bringing us
>> >>> back to 'reality'. And the rediscovery of Stoner and more and more.
>> >>
>> >>
>> > -
>> > Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>
>> -
>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?listpynchon-l
>>
>
>
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