SLPAD 8 - literary landscape

[Mark Kohut]

R.S. Crane and Elder Olsen of this group published critical works which
sold decently
and were not textbooks. To regular book buyers like I was once. They shaped
a way of reading
among many.
Philip Roth got his post-graduate literary education at U of Chicago and
started writing there.

Mortimer Adler was one of the founders of the whole Great Books Program, I
believe and working
at the Great Books operation was something the young Saul Bellow did. The
program reached the whole nation, even
Pittsburgh.

On Fri, Feb 24, 2023 at 2:31 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Chicago School of lit-crit (thank goodness it’s not their Economics, which
> leaves a bad taste to some extent) - Richard McKeon is the name I remember…
>
> https://literariness.org/2016/03/18/chicago-school-neo-aristotelians/amp/
>
> & wasn’t there also some magisterial & well-liked Chicago pundit who made
> lists of great books?
>
>
> Chicago Review - official organ of Humanities Dept at U Chic - founded 1946
> & published only student & faculty work till 1953.
>
> The big shake-up to which Mr Pynchon refers took place in 1959, around a
> controversial plan for an issue to contain 30 pages from William
> Burroughs’s _Naked Lunch_, as well as a Kerouac piece,
>
> and something by William Dahlberg, 1900-1977, a rather thrillingly
> accomplished face in the Lost Generation writer cohort, who lost an eye in
> WWI, wrote anti-Nazi stuff for The NY Times *from Germany* in the 1930s,
> taught at Boston University & Black Mountain, studied hard - which
> furthered changes in his writing style - wrote from Denmark, espoused &
> furthered social justice, married 3 times, spent the 60s in Dublin,
> attracted a Guggenheim in 1976, & passed away in Santa Barbara. (Mental
> note to respect, and maybe look for his autobiography)
>
>
>
>
> The imposition of censorship inspired all but one of the editorial staff to
> quit & found their own magazine, “Big Table”
>
> Some details
> https://www.chicagoreview.org/big-table-web-feature/
>
> A little more about “Big Table”
> https://fromasecretlocation.com/big-table/
>
> Jack Kerouac told them what to name it.
>
> It lasted 5 issues, then published books.
>
>
> Then there’s adjective-free mention of Norman Mailer’s essay, “The White
> Negro” in a list of “centrifugal lures” away from establishment thinking:
>
> “… Against the undeniable power of tradition, we were attracted by such
> centrifugal lures as Norman Mailer’s essay “The White Negro,”
>
> And a succinct but rave review for Jack Kerouac’s _On the Road_
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>