Young's Debs wow, due diligence on _Anniversaries_

[peterthooper at juno.com]

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Mark Kohut <mark.kohut at gmail.com>
To: "peterthooper at juno.com" <peterthooper at juno.com>
Subject: Re: Young's Debs wow, due diligence on _Anniversaries_
Date: Thu, 2 May 2019 06:38:30 -0400

Hey, a 404 err...send again?

---Ok, but its calumny against Ms Young and the Knopf copy editors is as yet unsubstantiated, as B pointed out. Have to reread and find out whether I was tripping off the fine, fine prose or there were like maybe 4 of those lovely paras that had strange loops in them...


Many fine reading recs from this list: particularly Marguerite Young, the one 
mentioned was Miss Macintosh but my gaze glanced off of that and latched onto _Eugene 
Victor Debs: Harpsong for a Radical_ - would that she would've lived to finish it, aye, 
and publish the mysterious bio of James Whitcomb Riley that she shelved to write about 
Debs.
 
Florid? Copious? Evocative? Check, check, check.

heck, also a pleasure to Double-check some of those long sentences every now and then & 
think I've caught one that doesn't parse. Once again proving the evergreen truth that one 
should never skimp on commas.
 Though it's always pretty clear what she's driving at anyway. 

But as EVDHfaR was written last chronologically, is it possible that the Riley book might 
have evinced more youthful vigor and fewer questionable phraseologies?
Though it was mentioned in her Dalkey interview, it's not been published, but I'd sure 
purchase a copy. 
A bunch of her writing was stolen from her, though.

But anyway, frequent mentions here of _Anniversaries_ - thanks, Mark, and going back a 
ways, Kai - call for a little bit of investigative legwork...

Fact: Uwe Johnson was in the Group 47. Their thesis, according to Wikipedia, was that 
genuine artistry is always the same as the opposition to Nazism. I think Gunter Grass 
a-and that Heinrich Böll were also members. 
Meetings sound kind of rigorous: a piece of one person's writing would be soundly 
thwacked by all in attendance. And if you were the guest of honor, you'd have to sit 
there and take it like a Mensch. No wonder Uwe Johnson moved to New York!
Just kidding, obviously.

Fact: in Germany an author is called a Schriftsteller.
 
Group 47 was inspired by the Spanish Group 98.

if there were a US group, which year would it be?


Fact: Nook books has an 88 page free sample of the translation

The preface talks about how he claimed to've met Gesine Cresspahl out walking and 
convinced her to be the subject of his book. 
This contrafactual vividity ("he's not mad, he's a-makin' pottery," as Mr 
Dooley put it) speaks to an investment in his work similar to that described of Pynchon 
in Manhattan Beach talking and laughing in his apartment with the characters in GR. So 
maybe there's a linkage of sorts.

Also, Gesine Cresspahl almost rhymes with Maxine Tarnow. (Just being silly now)

So she's out at the Jersey Shore swimming without her daughter, and wondering if there 
were Jews allowed to vacation at the similar beach town of Jerichow in Germany prior to 
Nazism. She's inhabiting her present and past, and there are similarities. Kind of a 
quiet way to begin a book, but really not bad (IMHO)
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