NP much but a little. Chicago World's Fair

[Jochen Stremmel]

PS. From the wikipedia:

The time appeared to be a propitious one for such a collection. The most
popular magazines of the day featured short fiction prominently and
frequently; the best authors were well-known and well-paid. More
importantly, there was a nascent movement toward higher standards and
greater experimentation among certain American writers. O'Brien capitalized
on this moment. He was deeply and vocally skeptical of the value of
commercial short fiction, which tended to the formulaic and sentimental; he
insisted, in introduction after introduction, on the need for a consciously
literary development of the short story. He used his selections to
reinforce this call. Over the years of his editorship, he drew attention to
two generations of American authors, from Sherwood Anderson
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherwood_Anderson> and Edna Ferber
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edna_Ferber> to Richard Wright
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Wright_%28author%29> and Irwin Shaw
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irwin_Shaw>. Perhaps the most significant
instance of O'Brien's instincts involves Ernest Hemingway
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Hemingway>; O'Brien published that
author's "My Old Man" when it had not even been published yet, and was,
moreover, instrumental in finding an American publisher for *In Our Time*.
O'Brien was known to work indefatigably: he claimed to read around 8,000
stories a year, and his editions contained lengthy tabulations of stories
and magazines, ranked on a scale of three stars (representing O'Brien's
notion of their "literary permanence.")



2017-01-08 17:00 GMT+01:00 Jochen Stremmel <jstremmel at gmail.com>:

> 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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