NP much but a little. Chicago World's Fair

[Jochen Stremmel]

In 1923 O'Brien published Hemingway's story "My Old Man".

2017-01-08 14:19 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> Further reading learns me that Bartleby was published in the book of
> stories called The Piazza Tales in 1956. I do not know how long that volume
> was " in print" before the copies sold out or were destroyed but it was
> never reprinted until the Melville revival of the early 20th Century.
>
> O'Brien, so deeply aware of Melville's genius in 1931, has
> barely-concealed scorn for the reading public of Melville's time and his.
> He writes--predicts-- that Americans will still only see him as a writer of
> sea stories. Uses the end of Bartleby to sum up Melville in Americans
> reading mind.  Got that wrong, fortunately.
>
> By the way, forgot in the first post to mention an allusion to the young
> Lewis Mumford, another Plist subject, from just an article in which he
> quotes Mumford on soulless formulaic city architecture as an analogic way
> of seeing formulaic fiction.
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On Jan 8, 2017, at 6:21 AM, bulb <bulb at vheissu.net> wrote:
>
> Bartleby was published in 1853.
>
>
>
> Michel.
>
>
>
> *From:* owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org
> <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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