NP much but a little. Chicago World's Fair

[Mark Kohut]

where?

On Sun, Jan 8, 2017 at 10:23 AM, Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>
wrote:

> 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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