NP much but a little. Chicago World's Fair

[bulb]

Bartleby was published in 1853.

 

Michel.

 

From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On Behalf Of Mark Kohut
Sent: zondag 8 januari 2017 12:10
To: pynchon -l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
Subject: NP much but a little. Chicago World's Fair

 

Some might find this not uninteresting. 

 

Guy named Edward O'Brien,

who seemed to be the founder, or at least first editor for the annual American 

Best Short Stories of the Year for a long while, made his bones with

a book on the American short story to that publication time, which was 1931,

it seems.

 

in this book's preface, one learns that he was friends with Robert Graves (!)

and his vision of the story is, when it is art, it is the presentation of a new 'form of life'

on the page. It offers a formed richness of emotions outside of standardized ways of

feeling. Almost Lawrentian, I'd say. 

 

It is THE American art form literarily, he argues.

America's  novelists ain't like them great English writers, with an exception or two, such as Moby Dick which ain't like them English writers as well. 

 

Anyway, he argues that it is around the time of the Chicago World's Fair that

the short story in the US changed and deepened in the aggregate enough to

produce a few most important Artists of the genre, of the real and new forms of life.

>From the Fair thru the next 20 years

of all the new immigrants which produced the seedbed for those richness of

emotions to overcome the standard US 'frontier' sensibility (in general). 

 

I send this re Pynchon as another example of his artistic finding of seminal events

to frame his novels around. 

When you go for the King (of Achievements), you better not miss--

and he doesn't. 

 

 

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