NP much but a little. Chicago World's Fair

[Jochen Stremmel]

In his anthology that you mentioned: The Best Stories of 1923.

2017-01-08 16:53 GMT+01:00 Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>:

> 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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